
















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Pass V\ Q n 

Book_ »V~. A-5* 

Copyright h°._ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 












“X' 


- { 


! &Ur%a& 

\-%. 

mm, 

:fcfl 

itgfi 



ipl 


"'ms 


\ free and happy childhood. 


Francisco Ferrer. 









The Child and the Home 


Essays on the Rational Bringing-Up of Children 


By BENZION LIBER, M. D., Dr. P. H. 
Editor ‘‘Rational Living” 



Published by Rational Living 
61 Hamilton Place 
New York 

f * 

/ 






Copyright 1922 
by Benzion Liber 


< 

r ' < 


c f 
< c ( 



©C!, A654665 


The beloved, modest, original, deep-thinking, open-minded, talented 
and faithful companion who has collaborated with me in spirit as 
well as in reality; who, through her simplicity and generosity, has 
made my work possible; who has always been a great source of 
inspiration to me and who has helped me to give 5hape to many 
thoughts expressed in this book. 


The Author. 




















TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Page 

Author's Note . 7 

Letter by Upton Sinclair .... 8 

The author's reply to Sinclair 11 
FIRST PART 

Fundamental Errors •••• 17 
SECOND PART 
Some Practical Advice • 41 


Start Early . 41 

The Child’s Dwelling Place. 47 

Playing and Fighting . 50 

The Child’s Conflicts. 56 

Influence .. 58 

The Parents’ Assistance .... 60 

Clothes and Dressing. 64 

Boys’ and Girls’ Work. 66 

The Heroic Age . 68 

Coercion . 70 

Punishments . 74 

Rewards. 78 

Fairy Tales . 80 

Obedience . 82 

Good Manners. 87 

Religious Ideas. 90 

Making the Child Immoral. 95 

The Higher Morality. 102 

Superstition and Intolerance 105 

The Child’s “Vices”. 110 

The Only Child . 114 

What Is Order? . 116 

Work and Responsibility.... 120 

The Kindergarten .122 

The School and the Home.. 124 
Mistakes of Radical Parents 129 
Means and Aims. 132 


Pace 


Some Objections Answered. 133 
Final Remarks. 13? 

THIRD PART 

Instances From Life •••• 141 

On the Ferry Boat. 141 

In the Train. 142 

A Failure . 142 

A Party . 143 

Guests . 144 

Matches. 144 

Meat. 144 

A Song . 145 

Up! Up! . 146 

Not Ordered. 146 

Help Not Wanted . 146 

His Majesty, the Doctor.... 147 

Who Is Foolish? . 147 

A Turkey . 148 

Rocks. 143 

Toys and Garbage . 143 

Knitting. 149 

Display . 149 

An Object of Art . 149 

What Is A Statue?. 150 

Dangerous Curiosity . 150 

Hair . 150 

Who Is Stupid? . 151 

Too Booky . 151 

Instructive Dialogues .152 

A Strike Breaker . 153 

Bottles . 153 

The Real Book. 153 

The Engine . 154 

Dolls .154 


5 






















































Pace 


Which? . 154 

Sincerity . 154 

No Reasons Given . 155 

Smoking. 155 

Birds . 156 

Drawings . 156 

Fear . 156 

Admission . 157 

Money or Mother? . 157 

A Bad Boy . 157 

Pride . 158 

Blocks . 158 

The Smart Father. 158 

A Quarrel . 159 

Threats . 159 

Complications . 160 

A Fine Warning . 161 

Going to Bed . 161 

Kissing ... 161 

Stealing . 161 

A Reason Given . 162 

Drilling . 162 

Thanks! . 162 

Consistency . 162 

The Effect of Words. 163 

In A House of Lies. 163 

The Cup . 164 

The Promise. 164 

Worry . 165 

Enoch . 166 

Responsibility ... 166 

The Incubator . 166 

Piggie . 167 

The Thief. 167 

Destruction . 167 

Filial Love . 168 

The Truant . 168 

His Opinions . 170 

“An Awful Boy” . 170 

Experience ..171 


Pace 

FOURTH PART 


Sex and the Child . 177 

Sex Morality . 177 

Children’s Questions ..179 

The Girl’s Plight. 184 

The Boy’s Plight ..191 

Masturbation . 193 

Opposition to Sex Education 204 
Conversations on Sex .208 


Dialogues Between A Wise 
Mother and Her Daughter 211 
FIFTH PART 

Health and the Child* •• 223 


Introductory Remarks .... 223 

Birth Control .228 

Influences During Pregnancy 228 
Remnants of Savagery .... 228 

Circumcision . 229 

Kissing .230 

Vaccination .231 

Drugs.232 

Surgical Operations .234 

Fads.235 

The Senses .236 

Gibberish Talk .236 

Speech Defects .237 

Physical Punishments .237 

Fear .238 

Habit Movements .239 

Clothes . 240 

Bathing .241 

Air .241 

Food .242 

Defecation and Urination... 247 
Enuresis Nocturna or 

Bed Wetting .248 

Health Habits .249 


Three Pencil Sketches, 

by the author. 


6 





































































AUTHOR’S NOTE 


Some of the chapters of this book have appeared 
independently in various periodicals during the last 
few years. Therefore, some repetitions are unavoid¬ 
able, although I have done my best to eliminate them. 

I expect that many a reader will have something 
to say against the ideas here expressed, even though 
they are far from being new. In the next edition I 
shall try to answer all worth while objections which 
will be brought to my attention. 

Being a parent and having been a school teacher 
in my younger days, I recognize that it is not easy 
to be rational with children in an irrational world. 
It requires a constant inner struggle, much self-criti¬ 
cism and self-education. But those who are in earnest 
and willing to learn, will soon overcome the worst 
difficulties. 


November 14, 1921. 

Dr. Liber has sent me his booh on the care of 
children, and I have read the worh with the greatest 
interest. The booh is full of dll hinds of helpful 
advice to parents, and I do not see how any one can 
read it without profit. It is evident that the writer 
has watched children carefully, and thought about 
them both with intelligence and with love. His health 
advice is excellent, and his talhs on the subject 
of sex are exactly right. It is a pleasure to be able 
to recommend a booh from which people will derive 
so much profit. 

Of course, no one could write such a booh expect¬ 
ing that any other man would agree with every word 
of it. Dr. Liber has sensibly offered to answer objec¬ 
tions from his readers, so I will supply him with one 
subject of discussion. I thinh he is too absolute in 
his statement to the effect that children never by any 
possibility need to be punished. This is one of those 
broad, general statements which are born of our 
beautiful feelings about life, but which cannot always 


8 


be carried out in practice . We wish to recognize that 
children are h/wrmn beings , and to treat them with 
dignity and love; but alas , sometimes we discover that 
children are little wild animals , and we have to com¬ 
pel them to change their natures suddenly. 

I think it would be an easy matter to demonstrate 
that in this very imperfect and ugly world it is some- 
times necessary that children should be compelled to 
obey their parents , and to obey quickly and without 
discussion. For example , in our cities children have 
to play in the streets because they have nowhere else 
to play , and if a parent has to teach a very young 
child not to go off the sidewalk into the street , the 
parent may find it impossible to make the child under¬ 
stand the distinction between sidewalk and street , and 
the enormous importance of this distinction. The 
parent may reflect that it would be far less cruel to 
bruise that child’s hands with a switch , than to have 
the child’s bones crushed by an automobile truck. 

In the same way , I found with my boy when he 
was a year or two old , that he had to play in a room 
with an open fire-place. Of course it is a monstrous 
and horrible thing that a child should be brought up 
in the presence of an open fire-place; it is as if he 
had to live in the room with a devouring demon. But 
we lived in an old farm house , and there was no other 
way to heat it , so I deliberately took this little boy 
and burned his finger with a match , so as to teach 
him fear of fire. I remember vividly how the child’s 
mother cried , and how very cruel it seemed , but it had 
the effect of making sure that that baby would never go 

9 


too close to the open fire-place, and never play with 
matches. Dr, Liber will have to explain how he would 
advocate solving such a problem. If he answers that 
he would reason with the child, I point out to him 
that he could never be sure the child might not dis¬ 
obey, and one act of disobedience might cost the child's 
life. By my act of “ cruelty", I made an impression 
on the child's subconscious mind which the child could 
never disobey, or even forget. 

My rules regarding punishment would be more 
complicated than Dr. Liber's. I should say, first, that 
we should never use compulsion where, by any possi¬ 
bility, we can use reason, and not until we have given 
reason a thorough trial. We should use just as little 
compulsion as possible, and we should watch carefully 
its effect upon the child. For example, I found that 
my little boy was of a high-strung disposition, and 
physical punishment excited him violently. But when 
he had misbehaved himself, 1 put him on a chair and 
compelled him to sit there and think it over until he 
was sorry, and this always solved the problem. per¬ 
fectly. I fully agree with Dr. Liber that it is a bad 
idea to make children obey—except when it is neces¬ 
sary. But when it is necessary, then I think they 
should obey , and obey promptly, and above all things 
they should learn that when the occasion for obeying 
arises , there will be no possibility of their getting 
out of it by argument or delay. 

Maybe Dr. Liber will be so hurt by these ideas, 
that he will not appreciate my praise of other things 


10 


in his hook! At any rate , however , my objections will 
help him to clear up his own ideas, and perhaps to 
answer in advance objections which will be sure to 
come to him. 

UPTON SINCLAIR. 

Pasadena , California. 

From the author : 

I expect such disagreements. My book may not 
have been able to convince Mr. Sinclair that all punish* 
ments as punishments are wrong, but it may have 
more luck with others. At all events, if it provokes 
thinking and discussion on the subject of children’s 
bringing-up, I am fully satisfied. 

Mr. Sinclair’s objection has been answered in 
advance in the book. But I wish to add a few words. 

Even if the parents were always perfectly intelli¬ 
gent and reasonable human beings, if there were no 
doubt as to their mental superiority over the child, 
if they were surely right in the discords arising be¬ 
tween them and their children, I would not think that 
children should ever be “compelled to obey” their 
parents “quickly and without discussion”, that is— 
just as soldiers are supposed to obey their officers. 
Such children would become, as many do, liars and 
hypocrites and totally or partially mechanical men 
with greatly atrophied and much debilitated thinking 
power. 

All the children know the difference between the 
sidewalk and the street. It is not difficult to explain 

11 


to a normal child, that the sidewalk is safe because 
the vehicles do not run there. The children learn 
that themselves and anyone watching them impartially 
will find that they are quite careful even if they do 
not show it. Of course, accidents happen. But don’t 
they happen to adults, to parents? A very small 
child is usually not left alone and should not 'be left 
alone in the streets without oversight. But even he 
can be told and explained and, barring an evident and 
imminent great danger for his life, as pointed out 
in the book, there is no need of using force and there is 
never any need of bruising his hand. Whenever possible 
and as long as possible, I would leave the small child 
alone, under my supervision, even in such cases. 

Years ago I used to watch the children of kinder¬ 
garten age in Mrs. Ferm’s famous little play and 
school room in New York. An unprotected red hot 
stove was standing in the middle of the room and 
the children ran and danced around it as savagely 
as they could. Nobody reminded them to be careful; 
but they never burned themselves. I have seen children 
playing in many places near hot stoves and open fire 
places, without the slightest mishaps. Usually things 
do not happen as we, grown-up people full of sus¬ 
picions and too much prevision, foresee them. Again, 
sometimes a child may bum himself. But how about 
the wise and experienced old people ? Are they exempt 
from such mistakes? 

To teach the child that fire is hot by forcibly burn¬ 
ing his fingers with a match, is not only cruel, but 
is not efficient. If the child is very young, he may 

12 


not see the similarity between a match and an open 
fire-place. If he is older, he does not need such 
humane warnings. 

Just as an inoculation of a disease with a needle, 
although it produces symptoms, is not a proof that 
the disease, when acquired in the usual way, will 
result in the same symptoms, so your match is not 
convincing to me and probably much less to a very 
little child. He may think that he knows how to 
be careful with the fire-place, even if he could not 
fight against you and even if he must submit to your 
punishment inflicted beforehand,—where, by the way, 
you are not as kind as blind nature would be. She 
logically waits with her punishment until she . . . 
judges that it is deserved. 

When your child “had misbehaved himself”—which 
usually means that the parents had misbehaved them¬ 
selves—you “put him on a chair and compelled him 
to sit there and think it over until he was sorry.” He 
may have told you that he was sorry , hut how can 
you he sure that he was not qlad to have “misbehaved 

Yes, it is easy for radicals to speak about liberty, 
but the real test for their love of liberty is in their 
relations with children. 


13 



FIRST PART 


Fundamental Errors 





« 




Civilization has complicated everything so much, 
has entangled so much every side of our life, public 
and private, social and individual, that we must spend 
more time in simplifying and disentangling matters 
and in destroying errors and superstitions, than in 
constructing and building new values. The simpler, 
the more direct, the more rational, the more appealing 
to common sense your opinions are the more you will 
be misunderstood, the more you will be considered a 
fool or a crank. 

This is even more true when you are not satisfied 
with preaching your ideas, when you try to live them. 
But there is no other way to propagate unpopular 
ideas than to apply them in practice. Action speaks 
a stronger language than the most eloquent speech. 
To live according to your convictions is the real mean¬ 
ing of that much abused phrase, “Propaganda of the 
deed.” Therefore, the conservative man who does not 
depart from his principles, deserves more esteem than 
that ultra-radical, who has only declamatory, boasting 
and empty promises for the future generations, but 
17 


who to-day does not differ in the least from his phil¬ 
istine neighbor. 

The same holds true in the bringing-up of your 
children. Your theories count for nothing if you can¬ 
not put them into practice. 

The astonishing thing which we discover when we 
live up to our ideas is—that it is easier than we imagine 
or than we expect it. In spite of all the hardships 
against which we have to fight, we feel at once as if 
delivered from jail or from slavery. We do not have 
to make believe, we do not have to try to please, we 
do not have to submit to all of the hundreds of con¬ 
ventionalities accumulated since centuries, and we feel 
happier. 

The greatest obstacle in our way toward a better 
order of things is the wrong method in which we have 
been brought up. Our whole civilization rests upon 
that method. If Archimedes was right in saying: “Give 
me a lever and I shall lift up the world,” we may say: 
“Give me the child and I shall lift up the world.” 

Why is it so difficult to make the people listen to 
new or uncommon ideas? Is it not largely because 
we have been brought up to become slaves of the 
current thoughts and principles and to follow the 
easiest way—the line of least resistance? Why is it 
so difficult to free humanity from economic oppression? 
Is it not because of our education of submission? 

Let us forget all the theories on education and talk 
plainly about the situation of the child in his parents’ 
home and about his rational bringing-up in his normal 
surroundings. For that purpose we do not need to 
18 


quote from Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, 
Robin, Key, Dewey, Montessori, etc. It is sufficient to 
use common sense, although this is so uncommon an 
article. 

Here is a hypothetical question: What would we 
do if we had not been influenced by any of the numer¬ 
ous beliefs, superstitions and prejudices imposed upon 
us by society—what would we do with our child! 
Let us imagine for a moment that this is possible. 
Would we let the child free—to play happily when 
and how he feels like—or would we prohibit him to 
do so because, under certain circumstances, he may 
look “savage” or “impolite”? Would we answer 
his questions as far as our knowledge would permit 
us, or would we tell him an untruth or withhold from 
him what we know, under the pretense that it is harm¬ 
ful to know the answer? Would we consider his 
original opinions worth while, would we respect his 
will, or would we have him do everything against his 
will in order to please society? 

Is it not probable that we would follow the most 
logical and rational way and let the child as free as 
possible ? 

I do not know whether education must begin, as 
it has been said, with the great grandparents. But I 
am convinced that we ought to make our plans be¬ 
fore the child is born. Therefore, I feel that I cannot 
omit from my introductory remarks this preliminary 
rule which I believe extremely important: 

In order to bring up your children correctly and con¬ 
scientiously, the first thing to keep in mind is not to 


have too many of them. Never forget that you must 
give to all of them, besides food, clothes and shelter, 
also your intellectual energy and your time. 

Be like the bird; prepare the nest first and do not 
have more little ones than you can afford. If you can 
have but a small nest, do not overcrowd it. 

Nor is this a temporary rule, good only now, for 
our miserable social conditions. I claim that even an 
ideal society could be ruined without control and re¬ 
straint in the production of offspring. 

Of course, this rule imposes itself even more on 
those who do not like children or who feel no desire 
to have them; such people should do everything to 
prevent them, as otherwise they would be bad parents. 


What the child almost always lacks in his home is: 
1) freedom, 2) truth, 3) respect for his individuality. 

You may profess the greatest love of liberty in 
your public life. You may be a revolutionist, a fiery 
speaker, a clever writer, a talented agitator, an able 
organizer. If you do not allow your child any freedom 
at home, if you lie to him, if you do not respect his 
will, if your private life is not in accordance with 
your ideas, you are a conservative, or, perhaps, a reac¬ 
tionary. You are not "worthy to have a child. 

Often the only chance you find to rule somebody, 
to be a master, is in your relations with your child. 
And you, who protest with your utmost power against 
despotic rulers, are using this opportunity to become a 
czar in miniature. 


20 



When I hear of a great man or of a famous teacher 
whose ideas appeal to me, I try to inform myself of 
the following things: How he makes a living and 
how he treats children —his own or other children. 

To define freedom in education is as difficult as 
to give a definition of freedom in general. But a defini¬ 
tion is unnecessary; we all know how much freer we 
could be without infringing upon somebody else’s 
liberty, if we were liberated from the terrible powers 
pressing us from all sides. In the same sense our 
children could be infinitely freer and happier than 
they are now, without encroaching upon the rights 
of others. 

It is easy to reply to those who criticize the rational 
bringing up of children. Often the answer is contained 
in the objection. 

Some think that freedom in education means no 
education at all. Others contend that it signifies no 
discipline, forgetting the much more important self- 
discipline taught by liberty in all its aspects. Still 
others say the reason our rational principles are faulty 
is that they are based on the supposition that all the 
children are “good” or that they are born “good,” 
and so we make no effort to improve them. A further 
argument is the belief that “too much” freedom 
renders the future men and women unable to adapt 
themselves to society, while the aim of education 
should be to teach us how to live with our fellow men. 

As to goodness, I must confess that I do not know 
what it is and I defy any one to prove me that any 
action is good or bad. It all depends upon the purpose 


21 


to which that so-called quality is applied, and there 
are many criteria, according to circumstances. In my 
youth, for many years, I was naive enough to look 
for the significance of “good” and “bad” and not 
only did I give up the problem as impossible to be 
solved, but I became convinced that a solution was 
unnecessary. I have not met a man who knew more 
than I do in this regard, although I have met many 
who pretended to know. Why then should I call 
anybody, child or adult, “good”? 

As to considering adaptation to other people a 
purpose in education, I am of the opinion that it is 
the most unfortunate principle we can find. The pur¬ 
pose of bringing-up in all its phases should be to 
make the child as happy as possible and we can reach 
that by allowing his individuality to develop as freely 
as possible. 

If adaptation means the natural finding of our 
place amidst the places occupied or to be occupied by 
other human beings, there is no need of any artificial 
training for that. In normal men (and I speak of 
normal children and adults only) it comes by itself; 
it is the result of a sort of balance of forces. 

If adaptation is to be forced, unnatural, it is pre¬ 
ferable that one should remain unadapted, as such an 
adaptation would mean the loss of our best qualities, it 
would mean to sacrifice , to annihilate the most origin¬ 
al part of our ego. And the result for society? A 
society consisting of colorless, characterless, soft, gray, 
dead men; a society that does not and will not make 
any progress. 


22 


What interehtTus'inthe individual and what makes 
for progress of society? Certainly not those qualities 
by which we are alike, but those by which we differ 
from one another. The first difference between one 
monkey and the other was the beginning of humanity. 
For numberless centuries the life of primitive men 
remained unchanged, as long as none arose who showed 
an appreciable dissimilarity from the rest, a slight 
departure physically or mentally, in his behavior with 
his fellow beings or in the use of his surroundings. 
We owe our present intellectual treasures not to the 
countless generations of those undifferentiated indi¬ 
viduals who were born, existed or vegetated and died 
without leaving any trace in the world; but to those 
who dared to be otherwise than the immense, formless 
mass, in the midst of which they lived and which 
ridiculed them, mocked them, stoned them, crucified 
them. From the smallest, most unknown person with 
some character, who has shocked his family by his 
“queer”, “eccentric”, that is, original deeds or 
thoughts, to the great heroes and martyrs of science, 
truth, rationalism, philosophy, they all, and they only, 
have their share in molding our progress. 

Our parents did not want us to acquire our own 
individuality, they wanted us to resemble them. If we 
had satisfied their desire, we would be similar to them, 
and if we will not allow our children to work out 
their personality, they shall be like our parents. If 
this continues incessantly, there can be no hope for 
a change. 

By freedom of speech we do not mean freedom to 
28 


express only those opinions which are tolerated by the 
authorities; by freedom in art we mean the right to 
produce art works according to the most unpopular 
principles. Just as freedom is needed whenever we 
want to see a soul express itself, so freedom is an 
essential requirement for education. 

If we are for liberty, we must allow the individual 
traits in men to exist. If we are for progress, we must 
encourage them and do all in our power for their 
development. 

I hear the objection that under present conditions 
—this is the typical excuse of the cowardly and lazy 
semi-“radical’’ — we cannot bring up our children 
freely and rationally, we are too poor, too powerless. 
This is not true; most of our errors in this respect 
have nothing to do with our social-economic situa¬ 
tion. Besides, the rich, who are economically inde¬ 
pendent and who are the masters in present society, 
commit the same or worse errors in their relations 
with their children. The education of the rich chil¬ 
dren are based on the same false principles as that 
of the poor children. 

No, you do not only make mistakes here and there. 
You, parents, are most of the time unjust toward your 
children; your whole system of bringing them up is 
wrong; it is almost always one big mistake from the 
beginning to the end. 

It is a great error to believe that childhood in itself 
is “not so important”; that it is but a preparatory 
passage to manhood or womanhood. No; it is not any 
more a transitory age than any other period of our 


24 


life, and the child is just as important as the man 
and the woman. 

The aim of education should not be to make of 
the child a future man, or, as they say, a future 4 ‘good 
citizen.” He is somebody now. I see in the boy and 
the girl a man and a woman of 5 or of 8, with their 
characters, their rights, which may differ from those 
of the adult, but which we should recognize and re¬ 
spect. 

We should strive to make this little man or woman 
as happy as possible now, and not only to prepare 
them for later happiness, especially since in their 
mature age their life may be filled with terrible 
struggle and suffering. 

The future will take care of itself, and, as a result 
of rational education, it will do so most of the time 
in a very satisfactory manner: The child will be well 
prepared to be a real man and society will be com¬ 
posed of fine men and fine women—an ideal society, 
resting on the best foundations. 

The majority of the so-called well-meaning and 
well-thinking, but in reality unthinking people, will 
not permit the child to find out anything by himself, 
without their aid. If the child gets his own experience, 
and discovers many new things, it is with difficulty 
and in spite of his caretakers, it is because these cannot 
occupy themselves enough with their offspring,— 
which is really good for the young generation and 
partly its salvation. 

Most parents will not give the child even an occasion 

to ask questions or to fail, to make mistakes, which 

25 


is so necessary in order to learn. They will attract 
his attention to everything, believing that by so doing 
they fulfill a great duty: “This is a bird,” “This is 
hot,” “This is cold,” “Sit straight or you’ll fall from 
the chair,” “Hold your hammer this way” .... 

Very often the adults object to the methods used 
by the child in order to do a certain work and they 
force him to adopt their methods. Why cannot the 
child invent new ways or choose new courses? I 
have seen parents get excited because the child did 
not accept their manner of making the neck-tie and 
others becoming wild because their boy went first to 
the grocer and then to the milkman instead of having 
done the reverse, as ordered. 

You may tell me the child should learn from our 
experience. You may also tell me that, if I am right, 
we should speak neither about schools nor about the 
bringing-up of children, as they would be unnecessary. 

But it is not true that we can learn the most vital 
notions from somebody else’s experience, and I may 
say that what one learns in school should not be con¬ 
fused with the things to be learned in the intercourse 
with the family members at home. School education 
has only partly to do with the development of the true 
personal character of the young, and the school sub¬ 
jects constitute in the best case tools to be used 
in life. Instruction does not always go hand in hand 
with character. A very learned professor may lack 
character and an illiterate peasant may be a fine char¬ 
acter with a strongly accentuated ego. 

Stop a moment and think what could happen if you 


26 


would permit your child to hurt himself, and whether 
this may not be from time to time desirable. If you 
can be impartial, you will readily admit that it is even 
necessary. 

Why is it that, no matter how much we “teach” 
our children and we give them, unsolicited, the results 
of our experience, they continue to burn themselves, 
to cut themselves, to fall from chairs, etc.? And these 
things happen to all the children. The reason is, these 
are things that none learns when told to learn them, and 
only a bad psychologist of children can advocate such 
kind of “teaching.” 

Besides, it is ridiculous to talk about the “experi¬ 
ence” of the adult. We see that he, too, notwithstand¬ 
ing his so-called experience, cuts himself, burns him¬ 
self, breaks glasses, falls down from high places and 
kills himself often enough through his own fault. 

The freer a child has been brought up the more 
personal experience he will gain and the more care¬ 
ful he will be. 

It is a mistake to deprive the child of his chance— 
often pleasure, sometimes pain, but necessary pain— 
to learn as much as possible by himself at the time 
when he wishes to learn it. 

One of the most unfortunate results of that mistake 
is that it contributes to destroy that precious treasure 
possessed by the child—his individuality—or that it 
does not allow his character to develop. Indeed, after 
some time of such teaching, the child will be more like 
you than like himself. 

Do the parents, as a rule, ask the child even when 
27 


he can have an opinion, for instance, at 5 or 6, whether 
he approves of the color or of the form of the clothes 
bought for him? Don’t they force their taste upon 
him? Or do they, the masters, give him at least a 
reason why they prefer these or those garments? No! 

How often do they dress their child like a circus 
monkey! Is it not because they regard him as a play¬ 
thing, to be used for their own amusement? 

How can we expect that children brought up in 
such a manner should become men with personal tastes 
and ideas who shall create things? 

One does not need to be a deep student to find out 
that some people do not allow their child to do even 
such things which could have no bad results. They 
do not permit them by habit or because they must 
always let the child feel that they are the masters. 
And not seldom have I heard these words: “Why, if 
I should let him do everything, he would become bad”; 
nr “I must show him that I am above him.” 

Many people do not permit the child to play here 
or to go there, in the house, not realizing that their 
house belongs to the child as well, and that his occu¬ 
pation is to play. 

Sometimes we transform that which ought to be 
’the best time for the child into an opportunity to make 
him suffer. For instance, a walk with the parents on 
a Sunday; how beautiful this could be! But what 
stiff clothes the child is made to wear! And how he 
must be careful to walk straight, still, orderly, nicely, 
not to jump, not to dance, not to whistle, not to sing, 
to admire nothing too loudly on the way, to stop no- 

28 


where. He must hold his father's big hand and not 
depart from his parents. 

The selfish, tyrannical parents are afraid the pass¬ 
ers-by in the street, who all belong to the silent con¬ 
spiracy against the child, might say, he is * 1 badly 
brought up”; they fear to lose their reputation as 
“civilized” people—the cowards! Therefore, they 
steal the child’s originality, his freedom, his happi¬ 
ness ! 

What wonder, then, that the child, on finding out 
that his parents are not his friends, not his comrades, 
but his superiors, enjoys much more to take his recre¬ 
ation without them, so that he may be free to see and 
do what he likes? 

And what wonder that some children run away from 
their parents? 

Some educators speak of inhibition as a necessary 
element in forming the child. Some go so far as to 
believe that the child must be taught to do what he 
dislikes and not to do what he likes, that he must 
be forced to refuse what he ardently desires and to 
take what he hates mostly. In other words, they claim 
that to render the child unhappy and to suppress his 
will is the right thing in upbringing and education. 

I am convinced that many a talent has been 
crushed by this inhuman, unnatural theory and that 
it has transformed many a plain, honest child into a 
cunning liar and later into a cheat, an impostor, a 
hypocrite, a criminal of one sort or another. Undoubt¬ 
edly, the large dose of inhibition and renunciation 
contained in the prevailing religious systems has been 

29 


baneful and pernicious beyond measure and is, among 
other causes, responsible for the slowness in the pro¬ 
gress of humanity in the last two thousand years. 

Inhibition does not need to be imposed. It is iden¬ 
tical with self-discipline and self-control. It is a result 
of our living together in social groups, of our adapta¬ 
tion to other individuals. Under natural conditions 
it is beneficial; as an artificial method it is a calamity. 

Another fundamental error in the relations between 
parents or, generally, adults and children is the lack 
of truth. You do not need to be extraordinarily clever 
to see this. If you are an objective observer and a 
lover of truth, it will be easy for you to find that 
rarely will an adult tell children the truth and that 
often he will lie to them. Just watch him and you 
will soon satisfy yourself that he lies to his own or 
to somebody else’s children. And notice the contrast 
between the enormous mass of lies which surround the 
child and the assumption of the older people that he 
must be truthful. This hypocrisy of the grown-ups, 
who, notwithstanding the inextricable net of lies in 
which they live and make the youngsters live, require 
of him that he never tell a lie, is revolting. 

All around is the lie, the conventional and uncon¬ 
ventional lie, the eternal foe of humanity. Adult men 
and women are lying to their best friends, to their 
wives and husbands, to their lovers, to themselves, in 
their higher and lower schools, in their personal, com¬ 
mercial, political, social and diplomatic relations,— 
internationally, nationally and individually, in momen¬ 
tous transactions as well as in trifles, in substance as 

80 


well as in form I They lie through words, deeds, ges¬ 
tures, books, yea, even by their manner of dressing. 
Their clothes always hide something or make believe 
something. The women’s rouge and powder lie as 
much as their smiles. They create lies in the shape 
of religious systems, they distort history and bend 
science to suit their interests or theories, they prosti¬ 
tute art to the god of lies,—art, the most sublime thing 
they have, the essence of the best there is in man! 
The press, which has evidently been created to give us 
the truth, is proverbially alien to it. One who knew 
his fellow men thoroughly, said: “Language has been 
given to man to hide the truth.” Another student of 
men said: ‘ ‘ If it is printed, it is a lie. And after all 
this, we have the audacity to punish the child for tell¬ 
ing a lie, or, more correctly, to punish him for having 
been caught at it! 

The father, who has told the whole day innumer¬ 
able untruths in his office, to employes, partners and 
customers, who has written letters with untrue con¬ 
tents and has signed his name a hundred times under 
the mendacious “yours truly”, comes home in the 
evening and demands the strictest truthfulness from 
the child! 

Our language is diffused with lies. The usual 
adjective is so little believed, that we instinctively 
strengthen it with “very”, “awfully”, “terribly”, 
“wonderfully”, “certainly”, “really”, etc., and often 
back these words with others. And even the latter 
must frequently be corroborated with still other terms 
or we must take God as a witness, and, after all that, 


31 


most of the time both the speakers and the listeners 
know that they are lying and tolerating a lie. 

The child cannot help being a liar. He is made so 
by everybody whom he meets, by everything he sees 
and hears—everything made by man. From his birth, 
the adults form an impenetrable wall between the 
child and the truth; they all conspire tacitly to with¬ 
hold it from him and to wrest it from him when he 
Ends it. 

It is ridiculous to hear the ignorant repeat one 
after another, and all after the upholders of the 
Church, that the child is born with all possible vices 
and therefore he is also a born or a habitual liar when, 
as a rule, the contrary is true. The child’s mind is 
simple, naive, direct, full of a healthy and legitimate 
curiosity and of thirst for more and more knowledge 
and truth, but through our education it is bathed in 
lies, it is violated in the vilest manner. Rarely can it 
resist a long time to the hot fire of mendacity in which 
the childish intelligence is being forced from the first 
minute of its existence among the adults who, gen¬ 
erally, have learned long ago to hate the truth. 

Besides, the child who is apparently being punished 
for an untruth is often actually not allowed to express 
the truth, which expression means to many people 
effrontery or lack of politeness—and so he is pushed 
by plain brutal force to adopt the lie as one of the 
most necessary of his weapons. Fear of the great 
authority of the adults teaches the child to employ ruse. 
He soon learns that he must not give his opinion can¬ 
didly, that it is dangerous to disagree with his super- 


32 


iors, that he is expected to obey them without any 
discussion, and when he cannot do so he finds a sub¬ 
terfuge that will save him from punishment. 

But the parents do not use only physical persua¬ 
sive means to subdue the child’s wonderful independ¬ 
ence, to curtail his freedom and to arrest his natural 
search for truth; often they are “educated” and 
“polite” and know how to twist his mind by means 
of sweet words: “It is not nice to say that, dear.” 
“You must not ask such questions, dear.” “I would 
not go there, dear.” And here a push, there a pull, 
further a significant frown with the eyebrows; that is 
frequently another way of accomplishing their brain- 
stifling work. 

And remember how many times a day you hear 
such sentences: “This is not a doctor, it is an uncle.” 
“You want the book? I have lost it.” (Has hidden 
it.) “If you don’t behave, I’ll call a policeman and 
have you arrested.” “If you talk too much, you’ll 
become sick.” “If you don’t eat my soup, you’ll die.” 

Seldom are adults ashamed of a child or do they 
fear lest he might soon discover that what he had 
been told was not true. Seldom do adults consider it 
of any consequence to lie to the child at any time. The 
people whom he meets in the house, the good uncle, 
the old grandfather, the smiling aunt, the big brothers 
and sisters, the parents’ acquaintances, and, of course, 
the parents themselves, lie to him at every step. The 
same thing with grown-up people whom he meets else¬ 
where. 

But I must say that / do not know of one instance 


in the work of bringing up children , where a lie is 
necessary and I am convinced that what is true for us , 
is equally true for our children . 

A strong objection to the present methods of 
bringing up children is the lack of respect for the child. 

To avoid a misunderstanding, the distinction be* 
tween love and respect should be drawn. 

Who can deny that most mothers love their chil¬ 
dren! But does this protect the child against the 
mother’s tyranny? Not more than the same love would 
shield the baby from the errors made by its mother 
in the physical care which she bestows upon it. How 
often is her ignorance, combined with her preju¬ 
dices in health matters, the real cause of the child’s 
sickness—sometimes death! To be sure, in such cases 
she is very unhappy, but her tears cannot resuscitate 
the little waif whom she has killed just as if she had 
intended it. Many times her love for her offspring 
is directly responsible for her mistreating them. In 
the same manner, through love, and through love 
alone, without the inhibition coming from reason and 
intelligence, parents may crush or assassinate the most 
precious thing their child possesses—his own soul. 
Love, as such, is no guarantee against conscious or 
unconscious cruelty. 

Love may be, and often is, destructive. 

While trying to lead the beloved person into what 
is regarded as the right path, while being over-zealous 
to help, and even because of such zeal, one may commit 
the greatest blunders, the greatest sins against the 
welfare of that most cherished person. Indeed, no 


34 


sentiment is more selfish, and therefore more blind, 
than love. All love—including parental love—is ego¬ 
tism. Of course, we must love and be loved, we need 
to take and to give. But we should be on our guard 
against ourselves, for our love benefits our fellow 
men only if it is mixed or mitigated with other senti¬ 
ments favorable to the object of our affection, and 
mainly if we appreciate other people’s right to freedom. 

Just to love does not imply or necessitate intelli¬ 
gence. The usual love is instinctive. A cat may love 
her kittens just as warmly as any human mother. 

Parents generally love their progeny, but do not 
respect them , do not view them from the child’s 
standpoint, do not consider their moral or physical per¬ 
sons as important as those of adults. They demand 
respect from the young. They say: “The child must be 
taught to respect us.” The child’s opinion is ignored 
as irrelevant or ridiculous. 

He must not take part in the conversation of 
adults. He must not stand too close to a guest. The 
parents are mostly indifferent to his wishes. 

All adults, even those who are entirely unrelated 
to a particular child, and no matter how inferior they 
are mentally to him, take the right to patronize him, 
to caress him, to mock him, to look at him from above, 
to admonish him and often to punish him. 

All this contributes largely to make of the child, in 
the course of time, a characterless being, who grows 
up to be more or less what his elders have been, and 
to bring up, in his turn, his children in the same way. 
Is it astonishing, therefore, that we meet so few real 


men, real individuals, with some originality or with a 
respect for other people’s originality; so few who dis¬ 
tinguish themselves in one way or another from their 
contemporaries? 

The few who do stand out from the crowd in a 
useful sense to society are far apart, and have had 
a hard struggle to exist or to express themselves. 

Of course, the whole frame of human society, to¬ 
gether with its economic system and all the principles 
derived from it, and the persistence of some sort of 
slavery during all our historic epochs and in all 
“civilized” lands, have been largely responsible for 
this state of affairs. But, while this may be another 
story of the egg and the hen, it is very probable that, 
in the last analysis, conservatism, which is to be found 
in all organized society, the inclination to perpetuate 
the order of things as they are, not to disturb the 
relations between men, social conservatism which is 
such an important factor in our long, changeless 
periods, and is expressed in the life of the individual 
man in his intolerance of new methods and ideas,— 
is itself an effect of the conservatism of each member 
of society, a sum total of the laziness and fear of 
change inherent in every one of us, or acquired by us. 

In our complicated relations it is not rare that the 
effect becomes the cause of a phenomenon which is 
itself the cause of the same effect and the result 
strengthens the first cause. 

We have put into the words “father” and “mother” 
much more of the idea of veneration and fear than of 
love. The child is seldom the equal of his parents; 

36 


he rarely has the same rights as they; seldom is he 
their friend, and seldom does he regard them as 
friends. They rarely deserve it. Parents and children 
are not always acquainted, let alone intimate. The 
child has no faith in his parents; one cannot trust 
superior people, masters, persons who have some of 
the attributes of 4 ‘divinity,’’ who are “faultless , 59 who 
are above one and whom one must respect uncondi¬ 
tionally and without expecting any respect in return. 

Real friendship between child and parents is pos¬ 
sible only where mutual respect prevails. The child 
should be considered as somebody, as he is, indeed, 
somebody, quite as much as the adults among whom 
he lives. 

I remember, when I was a small child and did not 
fully understand the conversation of grown-up people, 
I always thought their words must be very important 
and weighty and extremely wise. But when I grew 
up a little and listened to them as they talked among 
themselves, I was terribly disappointed to hear them 
say indifferent and trivial things and enjoy worse 
stupidities than I was used to hear among my little 
companions, and jokes which were not worth a smile; 
to hear them laugh without any plausible reason, and 
speak about entirely unimportant matters and in the 
most foolish way. 

Adults, considering themselves superior, judge the 
child from the height of their wisdom. When they say 
“bad boy”, “good boy”, “bad girl”, “good girl”, 
which, among those who deal much with children, 
occurs, as a rule, some hundreds of times daily, there ia 

87 


nobody to remind them that they too are often “bad 
boys’ * and “bad girls”. 

In the orders we give the children, in the blind 
and unquestioning obedience we demand from them, 
there lies not only our despotism, our cruel desire to 
dominate and to annihilate the liberty of those who 
are weaker than we; there is also a lack of respect 
for the powerless. Parents do not advise the child; 
they command him to do this or that. Think of the 
orders most of the parents give their children without 
condescending to state the ground for or the object 
of those orders or to explain them l 


88 


SECOND PAST 


Some Practical Advice 





Start Early 

There is no end to education. The work of bring¬ 
ing up the child—that is, of thinking at each step 
what and how to do, and what and how not to do, 
should begin at birth. The most important part of 
the work is in the hands of the parents; the child 
himself, becoming a man or a woman, will continue 
it until death; but how he will continue it will depend 
on how it was begun. The foundation is laid in the 
earliest childhood. Do not wait, as some will counsel 
you, until intelligence is fully awake, which means 
until the age of two. The infant needs mainly physical 
care; but his budding mind also wants your attention, 
although your help there should rather be of a negative 
than of a positive nature. ‘ * Hands off!” should mostly 
be the rule. Baby should be left alone, and I know, 
to leave your child alone, especially if you have received 
the usual and prevailing education, is the most difficult 
thing in the world. But make an effort; it will be 
worth while. 

A normal baby should be manipulated as little as 
possible. He must be fed and cleaned; he must sleep. 
He must not be disturbed or excited unnecessarily. 

41 


As a rule, all adults in the house and all visitors 
play with the baby. They carry him, shake him, lift 
him, tickle him. Often, while he is lying comfortably, 
quietly and happily in his crib or busy kicking in the 
air vigorously with his feet, or while he is contemplat¬ 
ing the windows and is learning to distinguish between 
light and shade, some one seizes him in the wrong 
way and starts to whirl him brutally around the room. 
A little later some other person attacks him suddenly 
in another fashion. Everybody excites his nervous 
system. Usually the majority of the adult people of 
the family, and from among the relatives, having their 
spaie time in the evening, annoy the little one at the 
time when he needs relaxation and mental rest. 

Why does an adult like so much to play with babies? 
Is it not for his own pleasure ? Is it not through sheer 
selfishness ? 

It will depend a good deal on the parents’ behavior 
whether the baby will acquire harmful habits or not. 
As there is no distinct limit between physical and moral 
education, some of the sins committed against the 
child’s body will be reflected on the condition of his 
mind, and vice versa. Nursing or feeding regularly, 
as the case may be, plenty of sleep and cleanliness, 
will not only keep the child healthy, but will have a 
favorable effect on his tranquillity and happiness as 
well. A normal child, living normally, is not cranky 
and is easy to handle. 

Right from the beginning learn to accord the child 
cheerfully all that you could and should grant him, 
and to refuse him sternly and energetically all his 


42 


impossible and unreasonable requests. Later, when 
you can do so, explain him why he cannot get certain 
things. Be kind to him, study him and try to under* 
stand him, but do not spoil and pamper him. 

All experienced parents know that a baby a few 
weeks old finds out quickly that by crying he can 
force his mother to submit to his will or to his caprice; 
that is, of course, if a wrong start has been made. By 
the improper conduct of his parents he is very easily 
taught to be stubborn. 

Therefore, do not postpone for a later age your 
plans for the child’s bringing-up. Begin as soon as he 
is born, or even previous to that. Be prepared; be 
sure that your general principles are right, and as to 
details, it will not be difficult to take care of them 
if you are frank and true and if you always think as 
much of the child’s freedom and happiness as of his 
physical welfare. If you start early, the task will be 
easy later. 

In order to be ready for the great responsibility, 
we must unlearn and forget more than we must learn 
and remember. To be rational is simplicity itself. But 
few parents have had a rational education and they 
have lived for 20 or 30 or more years in an irrational, 
topsy-turvy society. They have witnessed the most 
illogical things and events, they have been accustomed 
to conventionalities and taught to be shocked at uncon¬ 
ventional and unusual actions. The distorted, untrue, 
insincere point of view, the current morality, being 
the atmosphere in which they always breathe, has per¬ 
vaded their blood and marrow, penetrated their mind 

43 


and has been absorbed by their whole being. None oi us 
can, even with the best preparation, with the rarest 
power to relinquish old prejudices, liberate himself 
totally from the mountain of centuries-old, of thous- 
ands-of-years-old ideas and methods. They are too 
heavy; humanity has dragged them for too long a 
time to make it possible for any one to discard them 
at once. But unlearn we must; throw away we must 
as much as we can. We should make at least a step 
in that direction; it is our duty to the baby, who, 
besides his inherited characteristics, which we cannot 
change, is a blank sheet of paper and has an innocent 
body and mind, soft, like wax, entirely at our disposal 
and waiting for the imprints we will make. Our re¬ 
sponsibility is great, not only toward this young, fresh, 
palpitating life that has just come out from his 
mother’s body, but also toward the immediate descend¬ 
ants of this baby who will be under his—that is, partly 
under our—influence, and toward the countless gen¬ 
erations that will eventually originate from him. 

But some people, thinking of the responsibility in¬ 
volved in the brmging-up of a child, imagine it as some¬ 
thing so terribly difficult that they shrink altogether 
from it. We should face the work, but should not 
exaggerate it. Some of those who have Larned how 
to swim will recall how the fear of drowning made it 
hard for them to learn. Their movements were awk¬ 
ward, their muscles cramped and contracted, and their 
thoughts all intent upon the importance of the whole 
performance. They could not swim until they gained 
confidence in themselves and until they took their work 

44 


somewhat less seriously. We should not fall into any 
of the two extremes. By all means, let us put all our 
seriousness and all our attention into the new task, 
but let us do it with a light soul, with a promise to 
watch ourselves at every occasion, yes, but with faith 
in ourselves and in the child, who, if treated honestly, 
will be of great help to us. 

And let us not say, as some pessimists and sceptics 
contend, that there is no hope for us to bring up our 
children in a different way than most of the surround¬ 
ing people do; that we are not allowed by the written 
and unwritten laws to act independently. It is true 
that we cannot go as far as we would like in this 
respect. But, after all, there are regions in our lives 
where no power can enter; there are corners in which 
nobody but ourselves are the masters. All laws and 
conventions remain outside our roof, be it ever so 
humble. 

Within our four walls we can reach a great measure 
of freedom, if we would only dare, if our inner self 
were free. 

Nobody can force us to talk to our child in this 
tor that accepted way, to smile to him or to frown on him 
according to this or that theory, superstition or belief. 
And every one of our words and deeds count; every 
one of them will be placed somewhere in the brain 
of the being so dependent on us. While society is a 
tyrant, it can interfere but partially with our giving 
liberty to our child, with our making of him a person 
who thinks by himself and whose actions resemble 
his thoughts. 


45 


The reason why we should begin with the baby 
and lay our hopes in childhood is that the infant and 
the child are free and open to the truth and to new 
ideas. Of course, we may also hope to re-educate the 
adult, and sometimes this is accomplished, but never 
entirely, never radically. At any rate it is very diffi¬ 
cult, as all those who have tried to reform themselves 
and those who have ever attempted to make any sort 
of propaganda to others will bear me out. An adult 
may change his political and economic standpoint, 
he may as it were paint himself red on the surface; 
but his heart, his deeper convictions, his rooted habits 
are rarely altered. He is fundamentally the same as 
he was at the end of his first childhood, at the time 
when the formation of his character was ended. The 
mind of the grown-up is more or less crystallized. 
Some shrewd catholic teachers were right to say: 
“Give me the child before he is six, I shall return him 
to you after six.” Although my opinion is that the 
most impressionable age, the age in which the greater 
part of the character is molded, is between two and 
nine, I agree with them in principle. They knew that 
until six they were able to sink into the depths of the 
child’s soul such heavy stones that no human wisdom 
could remove. 

Yes, start early and start right. 


u 


The Child's Dwelling Place 


Everybody nowadays hears and reads much about 
the importance of fresh air for the health of the body, 
and very few people will have the courage to admit 
that they spend most of their time indoors, although 
this is a fact for the majority of civilized men in the 
cities and for many in the country. But the great 
outdoors is not only salutary for the welfare and the 
proper functioning of the organs; it is just as neces¬ 
sary for the development of the mind, for the under¬ 
standing of the relations between ourselves and the 
world, for the broadening of our thoughts. Room-bred 
children, no matter how much they have learned in 
schools and books, are ignorant, have a narrow horizon, 
are more inclined to homocentrism and egocentrism 
than others. They suffer not only from blood anaemia, 
but also from moral anaemia, as it were. Children of 
all ages will profit from being kept much outside; 
even small babies will be less cranky, because more 
amused and more interested in their surroundings, out 
in the open than between four walls. Let the child 
be where he is happiest. We owe it to him. 

« 


Rooms and houses are indispensable, but if we stay 
in them a too-long part of the day they are harmful 
from every standpoint. The rooms of the rich or of 
the middle class, generally filled with furniture and 
pictures of bad taste, and where the child is often 
under guardianship of slavish and doggish or utterly 
corrupt servants, who, subconsciously enraged at their 
lower social position, sabotage on the master’s children, 
contain a vicious and poisoned atmosphere. The rooms 
of the poor, overcrowded, dirty and ugly, are a hell 
for the child, who lives there in contact with all sorts 
of adults—parents, reatives and boarders. The con¬ 
gested street, sometimes far from any park, is not the 
ideal, but it is preferable to the room. The society 
of other children out of doors, although not always 
beneficial, usually towers high above that of the 
average adults, be they parents or governesses. Of 
course, if a choice between the latter two sorts of 
educators were permitted, the worst parents are often 
better than the ordinary governesses. 

As even under the best circumstances there aro 
many moments, many days, when children are forced 
to stay in the house, they should have their own room, 
their own working and playing room. Naturally, this 
is almost never possible in workingmen’s families; but 
the somewhat better situated workers or the small 
bourgeoisie, who could afford such a necessary luxury, 
also neglect it mostly, the child being considered as 
a supplement to the adult population of the home, 
and any room, the kitchen or bedroom, is good enough 
for him. Wherever feasible, the children should not 

48 


be denied their own room, where they should be at ease 
to do as they please. Where this cannot be had, the 
adults should be lenient to the child, who must play 
in all rooms and cannot help 11 spoiling’’ things; he 
has to be to some extent what you call “mischievous”; 
it is not his fault. If you cannot give him a room for 
himself, at least do not confine him to the kitchen 
or to a dark, unhealthy, cheerless sleeping room. (In 
fact nobody should use such a room.) Open your 
“parlor” to the child; do not keep it locked and all 
prepared for guests who rarely come. The children’s 
room should be bright, sunny, airy, simple, not ornated, 
with no fixed chairs and tables, so that the children 
could decorate it or change its inner form according 
to their needs and desires. The least suggestions the 
adults would make in this respect the more advantage¬ 
ous it is to the child. The adults should be onlookers 
and should watch with the utmost restraint, coming 
to the rescue in case of imminent grave dangers only. 


Playing and Fighting 

Do not forget that the child takes very seriously 
whatever he does; that which seems to you, who cannot 
recall the details of your own childhood, futile or 
ridiculous, is really vital to him. What you call play 
is for him work , or at least acting. His imagination 
is rich and flexible. Therefore, do not be astonished 
when, for instance, a chair becomes an engine. Do 
not accuse him of lying on that account. The chair is 
an engine for him in all earnestness. Acting is for 
the child often equivalent to dreaming, as his dreams 
have not yet been submerged and drowned under the 
veil of his subconscious mind. 

The child prefers a real object to a specially made 
toy that imitates an object or a person. Give him 
such things which you can spare; many times some 
discarded material will make a better present and 
will be more appreciated than an expensive toy. An 
old clock, some real tools, will make him happy. The 
reason is that he is not playing, but working—doing 
things. 

The very young children, who still have the habit 
50 


of putting everything into their mouths, should not 
get anything that could be harmful. But they are 
easy to manage in this respect, because they rarely 
have preferences. 

Mothers should never forget that food, pieces of 
bread, fruit, etc., are not playthings and that by 
nibbling at them and by half chewing them and swal¬ 
lowing particles of them, a baby is liable to spoil his 
digestion. 

Avoid to give the child a whistle, as its use is 
apt to become promiscuous and so spread disease. If 
it does happen that an older child has in his possession 
a whistle, explain him the danger of lending it to 
others, indifferently whether they belong or not to the 
family. By the way, this could lead to a very interest¬ 
ing and instructive conversation. 

Do not be angry if the child breaks his playthings; 
you should expect this. He has to find out how things 
are made, how it sounds when they are torn or smashed, 
what power he must use to destroy them—and even the 
fact that under certain conditions things do break. 
Curiosity is the mother of science. The child is a 
student, a worker and is always experimenting. What is 
an old story to you is new or unknown to him. We 
are accustomed to our ignorance, but he is not. And 
then remember: how many times did you not destroy 
your playthings before you gained your present ex¬ 
perience? 

Do not force the child to use the old toy with 
which he is disgusted. We frequently see mother# 
carrying their child’s doll or fathers pulling his loco- 

51 


motive, because the child, being tired of these play¬ 
things, had thrown them away. Sometimes it seems 
as if the parents really need the toy for themselves, or 
that, if they try repeatedly to impose it upon the child, 
it is not for the latter’s happiness, but out of economic 
considerations, because the thing cost money, etc. 

Do not put your own theories into the toys you 
give the child. To present him with a flag (any flag), 
or to bring him soldiers, swords and guns, is wrong. 
It is particularly unjust to teach him intentionally that 
killing is at any time a sacred action and that it is 
connected with bravery and heroism. Who can tell 
what share in the perpetuation of war is due to this 
education which glorifies the taking of other people’s 
lives under this or that form and in which war toys 
of one kind or another have always played a promin¬ 
ent part? 

If you live in the country, there will be no problem 
of playthings—that is, in a rational system of educa¬ 
tion. There the child is never idle. There is not a 
tree, not a branch, not a leaf, not a pebble, not a blade 
of grass, not a puddle of water, that may not be of 
service to the child. Yes, the sky and the sun belong 
to the party. Mud is a good architectural material. 
Climbing a tree is a great adventure. The life of the 
birds and insects, observed directly, the intercourse 
with nature, are more vluable books than all the 
libraries in the world. 

Do not expect the child to remain clean after some 
hours of playing; not more than you would expect 
a mason to be clean after a day’s toil. And, just as 


52 


a carpenter does not wear an evening suit or his 
“Sunday best” during his work, your child should not 
be dressed so that his getting dirty would be a sac¬ 
rilege. To keep him in clothes that would allow him 
no free movements is a crime. He is not a doll, and 
it is indifferent to him whether his stupid mother is 
ashamed that her more stupid neighbor may mistake 
the child’s working habits for an inclination to be 
unclean. 

As to the perils lurking in all experiments and 
adventures, including the child’s play work, they are 
not to be minimized. But, ultimately, there is a greater 
danger in eliminating all possibility of injury, and 
the child must pay the price without which he could 
learn nothing. He must get hurt. It is the parents’ 
office to prevent all really serious mishaps, which are, 
on the whole, rare. The only way for the child to find 
out how to avoid accidents is to be confronted with 
them. 

Healthy children are boisterous, not just to annoy 
the adults, but because they have to be so; they can¬ 
not help making noise. Loud yelling, uprarious laugh¬ 
ter, wanton nonsense (or seeming nonsense), pranks 
and frolics are their life. Previous to applying any 
punishment or to admonish them, stop a while and 
think. They are children; they are not so old as you; 
they simply cannot be grave and sedate; they must be 
jolly. And consider how much you gain by their 
gaiety, how much this elevates your own spirits under 
normal conditions. If you are at all sensible, you will 
readily enter into their scheme, and their exuberant 


53 


fun will communicate itself to you and capture you, 
body and soul. 

What would childhood amount to if it were quiet! 
How would its youth, overflowing with vitality, look, 
if it were always serious! A noiseless child is either 
a sick child or a subdued child,—in any case, an abnor¬ 
mal child. 

Never teach the children games unless they ask you 
to do it or you are yourself a real, whole-hearted 
partner. Let them invent games; let them play 
44 irregularly,” as you call it; let them teach each other 
what they know; let them be as original as possible. 
If you see them improvise a game that seems to you 
strange or absurd, or has no meaning for you, do not 
lose patience, do not intervene. It will not conform 
to your ideas as to how they should play. But the 
principal thing is that they be happy. Your rules are 
not good for the child. If he follows them, he does 
not feel as if he were playing at all. They are rules 
of old heads with old opinions and old tastes. 

Do not use out the child’s games for so-called 
practical purposes. Do not try to teach him arithmetics 
or latin by means of his amusements, recreations and 
diversions, although arithmetics may be played instead 
of being 44 studied”! 

No adult should mix in children’s fights among 
themselves, unless the danger for life and limb is too 
great. It is easier for them to adjust their quarrels 
or to fight them out, it is easier for them to make 
peace and arrive at an agreement without the adult’s 
assistance. As a rule our presence complicates the 

54 


situation. It is a well-known fact that often, while 
the parents, after having made “fools of themselves/* 
are still deadly furious against the opposing child and 
his parents, both originally contending parties have 
forgotten their feud and are again playing in the most 
friendly terms. Children are not as vindictive as 
grown-up folk. 


The Child’s Conflicts 

In his conflicts with the world, let the child as far 
as it is feasible, bear his own responsibilities and solve 
his own problems. He will soon find out that his liberty 
is curtailed by social conditions; it will be up to you 
to explain to him, when he asks you, why he cannot 
have something belonging to other people, why he 
cannot step on the grass in the city park, why he 
cannot take a picture from the museum, etc. But do 
not fail to tell him the truth and the whole truth in 
all questions. No matter what falsehoods you are com¬ 
pelled to utter daily for a living, leave your unclean 
cloak outside and approach your child with a pure 
mind. Become an innocent child in his presence. If 
he doubts your words, do not force him to submit to 
your views; let him transgress and see for himself 
what will happen. 

If the child cries in the street or in the street car, 
and if you know it is not your fault, if you have 
failed to persuade him that he is unfair, do not inter¬ 
fere. Do not be ashamed before the public. If the 
public has something to say to him, let them say it. 


56 


In general, it is not good to be intimidated by the 
child’s crying. If you are convinced that he is wrong 
and just spiteful, ignore a few times his tears and 
shuffling with his feet and he will come to terms, and— 
what is more—he will not repeat the same scene in the 
future. Pity as such is not always helpful. Of course, 
such occurrences are rare or impossible with a child 
rationally brought up from the beginning. 

When adults have altercations with children, most 
of the time, though not always, the latter are right 
and many a parent sees this after regaining his calm¬ 
ness. If you find you were unjust, have the courage 
to admit it to the child and ask his pardon. This will 
have a wholesome effect on him and will teach him 
not to be stubborn and to acknowledge his own errors. 

If the child’s behavior at table is insufferable, do 
not send him away. You will conquer him rather by 
leaving the table yourself under protest, and eating 
elsewhere. If he has been properly brought up, he 
will resent this more than anything else and will soon 
yield. Of course, in such cases be sure that you are 
right before you act. 


n 


Influence 


Some people misunderstand the meaning of a 
rational and free bringing-up of the child in the sense 
that they fear all external influences upon him. They 
do not see that it is not more possible or more desir¬ 
able that the child should avoid being influenced by 
environment than that we ourselves should not be 
affected by it. Furthermore, none of us can boast 
of not being influenced by the child himself. If we 
are open-minded we will learn a good deal from him 
and will frequently be swayed by him in this or that 
direction. 

The school, the street, the relatives, the world events 
will influence the child. What is necessary is to see 
that the child be as free as possible in order to get 
that influence in a natural way, so that he should, 
in spite of it and together with it, and making use of 
it, remain himself, remain an individual who is able 
to develop continually, to help change his surround¬ 
ings and be capable to leave a deep imprint in our 
world. 


58 


While I urge that the child's individuality should 
never be neglected, I would not want my readers to 
fall into the other extreme—to separate the child from 
the rest of the world. He is naturally interested in 
society, in work, in other children and grown-ups. Do 
not exclude him from all that; do not isolate him. 
Let him feel that all he possesses comes to him from 
the world and from human society, from the efforts, 
from the joys and sufferings of past and present 
society; that his foundations are rooted in society, 
that he has been born into a world that was ready 
before him, and that he, together with the others, has 
to continue it. 

Let the child become a strong social individual. 
If, on the other hand, you wish to influence the child, 
the best way is not to preach him, but to live up to 
your ideas. If you want him to be honest, be honest 
yourself. Keep your own promise if you want him 
to be trustworthy. If you want him tc be orderly and 
clean, keep your home clean and in good order. The 
child will talk much if his parents are loquacious, 
will easily become furious if they are inclined to be¬ 
come angry, will not be generous if they are avaricious. 

The child sees and hears and imitates—we are all 
imitators—what occurs around him. He is a keen and 
alert observer, his mind is ever open, and he always 
seeks to comprehend and to correlate what he sees. 


The Parents’ Assistance 


We all have a tendency to help other people and 
to correct what we regard as their mistakes, especially 
if we disagree with the methods employed by them. 
But there is an unwritten law which requires that we 
1 ’mind our own business” and we usually refrain from 
meddling with other people’s affairs. This law, this 
restraint, holds good, however, among adults only, 
probably because of the unpleasant results that are 
liable to follow in case of its transgression. Such fear 
being eliminated in our relations with the child, 
adults allow themselves to lend him their help, to force 
him to accept their assistance, to help him so much 
as to often deprive him of initiative. They watch him 
work and play, and believing him to be slow or in¬ 
competent, or disliking his way of doing things as 
being too uncommon or too original, they become im¬ 
patient and interfere with his activity. They forget 
that he cannot be as clever as they are and that ability 
can be acquired by practice only. They are also blind 
to the fact that originality, no matter how queer it 

60 


seems to a person used to routine procedure and to 
the beaten path, is always a quality and never a defect. 

Except in the case of extreme compulsion or 
urgency, we should assist the child only when we are 
requested by him to do so. 

If your child asks you a question and if you are 
able to answer, give him your reply in a simple, natural 
manner. Tell him the truth; tell him what you think. 
Do not try to adapt your reply to this or that pet 
theory of yours. If you do not know the answer, say 
so, and, if possible, try to find it out. 

To avoid a misunderstanding I wish to add that I 
would not leave a child in a real great danger with¬ 
out coming to his aid. But such situations are excep¬ 
tional. 1 have spoken above of those daily occurrences 
which are familiar to all of us and during which the 
adults constantly interfere with the child's will to 
learn independently. 

I have met many men and women who, because 
in their childhood they had not been permitted to do 
anything without aid, were utterly incapacitated to 
help themselves whenever any situation out of tho 
ordinary arose in their lives. Others, through the 
same wrong bringing-up during childhood, have been 
so crippled morally and mentally, as to be unable to 
attend to any of the everyday indispensable duties. 
They are entirely dependent on their parents, wives, 
husbands or servants. And the fact that most of the 
people are incapable to think independently, that they 
want somebody else to think for them and to manufac- 

61 


ture their opinions, is also largely due to this education 
of chewing the mental food for the child. 

The more you help a child, the more helpless he 
will be. 

It is true that the child may sometimes gain much 
by our experience; but our experience should not be 
imposed upon him. He should rather absorb it by 
observation, by seeing us at work. He must make 
mistakes and try out his own forces in order to obtain 
his own experience. He must have his own adven¬ 
tures, his own failures, make his own discoveries and 
inventions; he must find out by himself as much as 
possible. This is the only way in which one really 
learns and assimilates anything. The parents should 
be armed with the utmost patience. 

When we think of ourselves as experts in com¬ 
parison with the child, we should never lose sight of 
the teachings of history which show us that human 
progress is not due to the work of the experts of any 
given epoch, but to the achievements of the so-called 
inexperienced but daring individuals who, through 
their audacious experiments and in their attempt to 
test out their theories, have opened for us new roads 
and have brought us new lights. Continents have been 
explored, territories have been discovered, astronomic¬ 
al laws have been found, scientific principles have been 
practiced, social systems have been revolutionized, not 
with the assistance, support, co-operation and en¬ 
couragement of the experts of the time, but in spite 
of their opinions, nay, against their open, and often 
violent, hostility. And do we not see today that one 


62 


of the strongest obstacles in the way of a new social 
system is the warning of the ‘‘experts” in economic 
matters that the modern, socialist’s, single-taxer’s, or 
anarchist’s dreams are impossible—the opposition of 
the “experts”! 

Let ns avoid to put ourselves, to put our experience, 
between the child and his desire to achieve novel com¬ 
binations. 

At last, let us avoid to teach the child to become 
too prudent through our assistance. Too much of our 
oldish foresight may hinder the child to accomplish 
anything important. 


Clothes and Dressing 

The child should be allowed and encouraged to 
dress himself unaided as early in life as possible. This 
is one more step to teach him independence, will-power 
and self-reliance. Whenever there is no hurry, do 
not mind the slowness with which he will do it. When 
it is to his own interest to accelerate the work, as, for 
instance, when he desires to go out immediately, show 
him what he loses by lingering too long. The details 
of shoe lacing, buttoning, etc., are best learned by 
personal practice. Do not lose your temper when the 
child makes mistakes. Again, what seems easy to you 
may be difficult for him, although in many other re¬ 
spects the reverse may be true. If at all possible, turn 
your back and do not look to the child when he is 
dressing himself. 

While I do not advise anyone to be too cranky 
about clothes and would not recommend anybody to 
judge a person by his outer neatness, I would con¬ 
demn real slovenness, as symptomatic for other de¬ 
fects. If you wish that the child be careful in his 
dressing habits, you must not neglect your appearance 


64 


yourself. Do not be a bad model, as, no matter how 
original your child will be, he will—or may—copy 
many of your traits. Though cheap and poor garments 
are generally ugly and cannot always be kept clean, 
there may be a certain touch to them that betrays a 
desire for order and beauty. This the child should 
constantly have before his eyes. 

Let the child’s clothes be as simple as possible, no 
matter how wealthy his parents are. Discard the super¬ 
fluous clothes. This will be more agreeable to the 
child and will make dressing and undressing easier 
for him. 


55 


Boys' and Girls* Work 

Little girls are more prompt in learning how to 
dress themselves than boys. But I am not certain that 
this is due—or at least altogether due—to an inborn 
inclination to housework. It seems rather to be a 
consequence of the belief that the girl has been chosen 
“by nature” to attend to what is called female occu¬ 
pations and therefore she is trained for that purpose 
from the very beginning. 

Plenty of instances could be given where an educa¬ 
tion contrary to the prevailing ideas has proved the 
opinion concerning the feminine innate skill at domestic 
duties to be unfounded. 

I am far from preaching that boys should be femin¬ 
ized or girls should become boyish. Rather do I be¬ 
lieve in the conservation of all the useful and fine 
mental qualities that go with the differences between 
the sexes. But unfortunately the children are mostly 
being made one-sided and artificially specialized in 
accordance with the parents' and society’s theories, 
and so are losing many opportunities to make use of 


66 


all their latent qualities and to gain all the dexterity 
and efficiency of which they would be capable. 

The girls ought to be less girlish; their acquired 
or inherited adroitness for delicate performances ought 
to be completed by exercises that would give them 
strength and daring, a condition they would certainly 
reach if freely brought up, as I know from actual 
experience. 

Boys should not be brought up to think that a 
man must never wash dishes and girls so as to believe 
that a girl must not drive a nail into the wall. 

It is not improbable that our continual reiteration 
and insistence that certain works and duties are too 
masculine for girls and women has contributed much 
to retard the emancipation of women. That many or 
all of our claims as to such incompatibilities are false 
has been demonstrated again and again by the fact 
that women have lately entered a multitude of fields 
hitherto considered unwomanly. And do not men 
make the best cooks and tailors and are not most dish¬ 
washers in restaurants recruited among men? 

The boys should not be boyish only; they should 
not lack grace; their rougher and coarser character¬ 
istics should be supplemented by those capacities of 
which they are so much in need. 

And let the girls not acquire that intolerable habit, 
usually imparted to them by their mothers, to mother 
too much the male sex, first their brothers and later 
their husbands, which is often the cause of grave 
marital quarrels. 


87 


The Heroic Age 

I do not think, as some people claim, that there is 
a particular “heroic age” for boys, that is, some years 
during which they are inclined to be more romantic 
and to undertake more difficult tasks than at other 
times. Boys and girls, if left alone, are always heroes 
and heroines; childhood is the heroic age of our life. 
Until experience has taught the child that many of 
his visions are impossible of attainment he clings to 
them. But as he learns to check his fancy against 
the facts of crude reality and to correct and inhibit 
his imagination, he gradually grows more and more 
sober and drops most of his dreams one by one. Of 
course, to a certain extent this is unavoidable, but 
much depends on how adults meet the products of the 
child’s phantasy. They often misunderstand him and 
unfortunately succeed in shortening this happy period 
through ridicule or by cruel force, in which case they 
have irreparably destroyed a most valuable part of 
his soul life and inner felicity. 

Indeed, who knows how many dry, prosaic, matter- 
of-fact, inartistic temperaments among people of all 


68 


walks of life are the result of this forcible r.tilling and 
suppression of the child’s illusions. Something of their 
deep appeal should remain with us until the grave;—* 
as it does with many, but, alas, not with all, with 
some more, with others less, according to the education 
we have had and to the circumstances through which 
we have passed. 

Whenever you are inclined to “correct” the child, 
stop and think whether your standpoint is really the 
correct one and what the effect of your words may be. 
When it is compatible with other phases of his life, 
let him enjoy his romances, and, to the best of your 
ability, share them with him. It will do you good, 
too. Do not take from him what you cannot replace 
or give him, his sun, the inspiration coming from his 
inner light. Let him empty the whole cup of his child¬ 
ishness; he will carry enough of the hard and heavy 
burdens later. Surrounding conditions will awaken 
him in time. 

And always have before your mind the fact that 
the child is an apprentice; while he is brought up, 
he is learning the trade, as it were, of being a parent 
to his own future children. Your way of bringing him 
up may be a mirror for him, or perhaps a net from 
whose meshes he may be unable to disentangle himself 
in his mature days. 


Coercion 


Do not use force with the children, not only be¬ 
cause of the barbarity and physical pain involved in 
it, but also because of its disastrous effects on their 
mind and character. To bend them, to achieve their 
submission, means to weaken their manhood and 
womanhood, to help enslave them in the future. Force 
may inspire fear, may breed hatred, but will never 
convince any one. How often do I meet middle-aged 
men and women who confess that they still detest their 
parents because of the cruelty of the latter in the past, 
and that the usual conventions only compel them to 
feign an apparent “friendship” for the old folks! 

In the autobiographies of great writers we find that 
in all cases in which their mothers had been mild and 
good to them in the writers ’ childhood, the latter de¬ 
scribe them with much affection and gratitude. 

Why should your memory not be loved and cher¬ 
ished by your children? 

Even caresses should not be bestowed upon 
children by force. Do not kiss or embrace them if they 
show the slightest sign of disapproval. To disregard 

70 


their will or pleasure in this respect amounts to an 
actual abuse. 

You may say that all these are but minor details; 
but the whole life of the child—and of the adult too, 
for that matter—is composed of such little details 
only, as very few are the people who ever have great 
adventures. 

But some modern and cultivated people, those who 
have heard something of freedom in education, have 
endeavored to find a way out of the difficulty. They 
know how to force the children hypocritically and 
gently, gracefully and with the sweetest voice. The 
result for the child is the same or worse as if brutal 
force were used. The children become meek, submis¬ 
sive, compliant and characterless. 

In a free bringing-up of the child, all dishonest 
means should be discarded. Coercion is coercion, no 
matter in what suave manner it is practiced. 

Do not insist on turning the child’s attention to 
things in which he is not interested. Do not teach 
him what he does not care to know or that to which 
he is not inclined. 

It is undoubtedly a mistake to compel a child to 
study music against his will. Those foolishly ambitious 
parents who would make of their children musical 
celebrities should understand that just because one 
or two famous musicians had their talent brought out 
by constant whipping during childhood, it does not 
follow that all children will succeed in learning even 
the elements of music if these are poured down their 
throats by compulsion. The fact that so many hun- 


71 


dreds of thousands of children are tied daily to the 
piano or violin without any appreciable result except 
a selfish satisfaction for the unintelligent and tasteless 
parents, ought to be a strong argument for letting the 
children alone. 

And do not insist that the child sing or recite 
before your guests. He is not your plaything. He will 
perform if he so chooses, but if he cares not for your 
friends, who, mind you, are not necessarily his friends, 
or if he is not in a mood to please you or them, do 
not urge him to submit. 

All normal children have talents; some are marvel¬ 
ously genial and remain so in the future, if we do not 
muzzle them and if social conditions do not blight or 
destroy their gifts. Sometimes the latter, even if 
promoted, disappear by themselves; they die a natural 
death. But in all cases it is our duty to encourage and 
stimulate them by generous praise, and not, as many 
do, to dishearten them by disdain and mockery. I am 
speaking of the very young children, of course. Let 
them dance; they will do it with more grace and in¬ 
dividuality than the teacher to whom you may send 
them. Let them make up poems; do not correct them. 
Let them draw pictures; do not criticize and instruct 
them; do not laugh at the too long nose and the too 
short arms in their sketches; do not jeer and rail at the 
unreal animals and trees in their drawings. There is 
a meaning in them, there is an inclination to translate 
imagination into reality. 

Do not compel your child to wear long hair just 
because you, in your vanity, are reluctant to part with 


72 


his head ornament, or because you find it becoming. 
The child is not your doll. Let him be as comfortable 
as possible for his constant work. 

Never force the child to confine himself to the use 
of the right hand only. While the original cause of 
our preference to use the right hand for our work is 
still under discussion, there is no doubt that ambidex¬ 
terity, that is the use of both hands, whenever this is 
possible, is of great advantage and should be counten¬ 
anced and promoted. 

By all means, let the child read and see beautiful 
things, but do not compel him to do so. If he objects, 
wait; his time will come. Try again later. Or perhaps 
his temperament is different from what you expected. 

It is undoubtedly a mistake to force the child to 
ask forgiveness for anything he has done or said. It 
is humiliating and has the effect of injuring his pride 
and of softening his personality more than it is neces¬ 
sary. You may be able to persuade him, to make him 
see that he has committed an injustice, if such is the 
case. This is sufficient. If you are in the habit of 
acknowledging your own errors and particularly your 
sins toward him and to make apology for them, he may 
do so too. But if he does not do it of his own accord, 
do not insist. 


Punishments 

Punishments as such are never needed in our rela¬ 
tions with the child. A punishment is an act of revenge 
against those who incur our wrath for doing some¬ 
thing we do not like. A punishment never has the 
effect to correct or improve. Usually it has the con¬ 
trary effect, leaving, besides, a more or less pronounced 
feeling of rancor or hatred against the physically 
stronger person who orders or executes the punishment. 
It engenders lying. And if the child does change his 
conduct, apparently as a result of the chastisement, 
he does so in reality only when he is under watch 
or observation. If somebody is “good” only for fear 
of being punished, he is truly not “good” at all. 

Excepting some restraints in extreme cases, which 
are very rarely necessary with children whose bringing- 
up has been rational from the beginning, there is no 
danger for the child to be left free in his words and 
actions. In a correct education there can be no place for 
punishment of any sort: the child will find his penalty 
in the pain or displeasure which will follow his deeds, 
exactly as is the case with adults. 


74 


If a child will do me some harm, of course I will 
tell him my opinion or I may act as I would if an 
adult should offend me in the same way; this will 
depend on the circumstances. I may express my dis¬ 
content by not talking to the child for some time or 
by being less friendly to him than ordinarily. I 
would do that not with the intention to impose a pen¬ 
alty and not in a calculated or premeditated manner, 
but because I would really feel like acting that way, 
and only if I so feel. And if my relations with the 
child are generally cordial, the contrast would be 
striking and would make the child think. 

Punishment may range from the coarsest bodily 
aggression to the finest and most polite words with 
which one may steadily annoy the victim. 

That physical tortures, which are comparatively 
little employed against adults in the more modern 
prisons, still prevail in the homes and are frequently 
used against children, is incontestable. Not to speak 
of the many fiendish and refined inventions by which 
all kinds of pains are inflicted upon children, not to 
speak of the occasional violent rage of many other¬ 
wise normal parents who in such moments go to ter¬ 
rible extremes, regular and typical instruments with 
which children are castigated still exist. Some time 
ago—oh, bitter irony!—I saw the cat-o ’nine tails hang¬ 
ing in a New York store near the children’s toys! . . . 

Yes, corporal punishment still reigns supreme 
everywhere, alas! even among progressive parents. 
No matter under what conditions it is being applied, 
it is nevertheless but a cowardly and barbarous act 


75 


which proves nothing else than the adult's muscular 
superiority and the dependence of the child. Flogging, 
whipping, boxing the ears survives in the schools, too, 
in the schools of all civilized countries, including our 
own, although it is legally and on paper prohibited. 
“Bad marks” in school and the importance in which 
they are held by the parents, have often been the 
cause of illness and death or much suffering, but rarely 
of real improvement in children. The punishment sym¬ 
bolized by the rod shows the parents’ or teachers' 
moral weakness, as it emphasizes their lack of other 
arguments, not to mention the fact that the child 
usually does not fail to adopt the same methods as his 
elders, and that he remains with these methods for life 

Even those punishments which amount only to 
menacing the child or to terrorizing him morally, are 
dangerous. If you think that something should not bt 
done, why not explain that it should not be done be¬ 
cause it is harmful? Why tell the child “Don’t do it, 
the policeman will take you!” or “The man will come 
out!” or “God will punish you!” The other day I 
heard a father say to his child in the train: “If you 
don’t sit still, the Bolshevik will get you!” And how 
ridiculous and foolish it is for mothers to threaten 
the child with the father’s punishment! “I’ll tell 
your daddy!” is a confession of inferiority on the 
mother’s part and an incitement for the child to hate 
his father. 

Some parents threaten the child so constantly, that 
many good and necessary things are regarded by him 
as punishments. How should his mind not be confused 


76 


if his parents tell him “If you don’t keep quiet, I’ll 
make you an enema!” or “If you are naughty, I’ll 
call the doctor!” and use other similar stupid threats? 
When he really needs the doctor or when an enema 
must be made, the child is terribly frightened in ad¬ 
vance. 

Fortunately for the children, rarely can a father 
or a mother afford to pay as much attention to them, 
that is, to dominate them as much, as he or she would 
desire. This saves them from being entirely and 
utterly crushed. 

Sometimes the rage of punishing the child for 
everything that seems sinful to the parents results in 
a true catastrophe for the child’s future. For instance, 
he is often punished for carving the edge of the table 
and for destroying other pieces of furniture with his 
pen-knife, and so perhaps a talent for sculpture is 
being nipped in the bud, instead that his so-called bad 
inclinations be led into the right channel, instead that 
wood and tools be given him to be used and spoiled 
to his heart’s desire. 


H 


Rewards 

One of the most unfortunate methods in the rela¬ 
tions between parents and children is to give the 
youngsters a reward for obedience, for submission 
for “being good”, for doing “good” things,, for doing 
their duty. Where this continues for some time the 
child becomes a little tyrant and does nothing without 
a recompense, which, in such case, amounts to a bribe. 
He exacts a tribute that must be paid if the vicious 
circle brought about by his parents’ stupidity is not 
broken somewhere. 

This situation often begins at a very tender age 
when something is offered the baby to stop his crying, 
and continues all through childhood and adolescence. 
Toys are given not because the child is in need of them, 
but in order to repay him for his good behavior or to 
appease and propitiate him. A penknife is presented 
to him because he has had good marks in school. Cakes 
and sweets are not food, but remunerations for services 
rendered. A penny- is an argument to make the child 
keep still. 

Under such conditions all reasoning is lost. The 
child knows his parents’ weakness and learns that by 


78 


lying, flattering or threatening he can obtain anything 
he desires and that his elders are an inexhaustible 
source of exploitation, of income, for him. 

Recompenses are akin to punishments: both have 
the same demoralizing effects. 

Children should be so raised as to do their duties 
without either expecting a reward or fearing a chastise¬ 
ment. 

Money should be given them when needed, and not 
as a salary for services rendered to the house. 

Of course, praise for work well done should never 
be spared; it should be granted whenever there is an 
opportunity, which in the case of normal children 
occurs quite frequently. It should be sincere and true. 

If you are able, give your child pretty and instruc¬ 
tive books, let him see good paintings and sculpture, 
take him to the theatre, to good music and beautiful 
dancing, whenever such performances, suitable for 
the young, are going on in your city or neighborhood; 
by all means do so. But do not give this pleasure in 
such a way that it is considered a special favor be¬ 
stowed upon the child, or a compensation in exchange 
for some *work performed, or as the payment of a bill, 
as it were. Amusements of one sort or another are 
just as necessary as food. You owe to the child those 
mental pleasures that are in accordance with your 
purse, whether he “behaves'* or not. 

By the way, do not give him amusements which he 
obviously cannot enjoy. For instance, do not take a 
child of seven to “Aida” or to some difficult concert, 
as some parents do. 


79 


Fairy Tales 


In the last years some educators have been pro¬ 
testing against the telling of fairy tales to the child. 
They claimed that this old fashion was detrimental to 
the child’s intellectual progress and that it filled him 
with superstitions. I disagree with this opinion. To 
my mind, a pretty fairy tale, well written or beauti¬ 
fully told is, in a sense, just as true as any of the 
best literary novels catering to the adults; in fact, 
an adult with taste for art and with some imagination 
will derive from it quite as much joy as a child. 
There is some truth and some teaching in every good 
fairy tale; although even if there is nothing.but mental 
pleasure in it, it is worth while. Besides, a child 
brought up rationally will be made happy by a fairy 
tale, but will not lose his power to discern between 
real truth and fable and his ability to compare and 
criticize the story will remain intact. 

Just as it is a mistake to keep the child too naive, 
it is a bad policy to make him lose his childishness and 
become too grave and serious. He may be interested 
in scientific facts or ponder over political and social 


*» 


problems, as I have known children to do, and at the 
same time preserve that admirable care-free and jolly 
behavior so characteristic for his age. He may in all 
earnestness want to understand natural phenomena 
difficult to explain and simultaneously jump on one 
foot, climb a tree or play you a trick,—or listen with 
deep interest to a fairy tale. 

I cannot say the same thing about weird and un¬ 
canny ghost stories and other ugly and frightful 
narrations, which are calculated to pour poison in the 
form of fear into the child’s soul and so render his 
nervous system unbalanced. They often have dis¬ 
astrous effects immediately or in after-years. 


81 




Obedience 

Obedience means ‘ * submission to command, pro¬ 
hibition, law or duty”. To obey means “to do the 
bidding” of a master, “to comply” with an order, 
“to be controlled” by a power. By definition, then, 
“to obey” indicates a loss of one’s will, of one’s per¬ 
sonal rights, a handing over of one’s liberty to decide 
to another person who is therefore empowered to en¬ 
join, to dominate, to rule. 

One of the consequences of obedience, even when 
not strictly enforced, even when “hearing” is not 
“obeying”, is the destruction or diminution of per¬ 
sonality. It is claimed that the obedient individual, 
while losing his independence, is gaining in comfort 
because of his lack of responsibility. But this is un¬ 
true, as even those people who are mostly and by force 
of habit since long deprived of much of their conscious 
volition, do feel at times a more or less dull or muffled 
revolt against their condition, a revolt which may, 
under certain circumstances, blaze forth into an open 
rebellion. Does it not happen that soldiers who are 
old in service and whose real self has been squeezed 


82 


out by many years of discipline, sometimes show signs ► 
of chafing under the chains and finally mutiny? Such 
occurrences are explicable by the fact that while the 
habit of blind submission and obedience may kill a 
large part of the will power and self respect of a 
large number of people, it never kills it altogether and 
in all those concerned. Personality may be paralyzed, 
maimed or outwardly crushed by fear, but it reserves 
itself a corner in the victim’s soul, where it stays 
concealed and from where it sometimes springs out 
or where it remains until the individual’s death annihi¬ 
lates it. From its hidden place it may utter subdued 
or dumb, ineffective and impotent menaces. It may 
cause abject and hypocritical crawling before the 
mighty master. Practically its existence may be con¬ 
sidered as nil; but latently it exists and indifferently 
whether consciously or unconsciously, it waits for an 
opportune moment to burst forth in the form of accu¬ 
mulated wrath, and not only to get justice, but revenge 
as well. 

Lying in all its forms, from the coarse, gross, evi¬ 
dent lie, to the mental reservation and the fine untrue 
noddings of the head or the false smiles or the skill¬ 
fully woven half truths,—base, flattery, low servitude, 
—these are the results of obedience. 

It is certainly just as mean, if not more so, on the 
part of the oppressor to be obeyed, that is to control 
by fear, as it is for the oppressed to obey, to act 
through fear. No matter how deeply this condition 
has penetrated into their lives, in the last analysis it 
is a misfortune for both. 


And how undesirable it is that anybody should 
shirk responsibility and have someone else bear it for 
him! Nothing gives as much strength to a man or 
woman, nothing makes them more capable to accomp¬ 
lish something and to work for mankind’s progress, as 
the necessity of being responsible for their actions. 
This is true for all members of society, for all classes, 
for all ages, including the period of childhood. The 
consciousness of one’s responsibility brings a natural 
self-discipline, which is in all respects infinitely more 
worthy and precious than any enforced discipline. 

But according to the prevailing methods of bring¬ 
ing up children the parents’ ideal is the child’s com¬ 
plete obedience, his meek submission, his perfect sur¬ 
render! A vile and sordid vice, the mother of endless 
other vices is being sung as the highest virtue of 
which the child is capable! A calamity which has 
done and is doing unspeakable harm to everyone of 
us separately and to all of us collectively and which, 
among other things, has been the cause and the means 
of all wars and of humanity’s backwardness, glad¬ 
dens the heart of so many misguided parents and 
teachers! A child is “good” if he obeys; he is “bad” 
if he disobeys,—this is the test by which he is usually 
judged. 

The child must obey without discussion; he must 
believe that his parents are always right, that they 
never fail, and, therefore, their commands are sacred. 
Are there many parents who realize what a misfortune 
it is for the child to get into the habit of obeying 

84 


without knowing why, and the result of such an. 
obedience for the child’s intelligence? 

Not only is the child’s happiness marred, not only 
is his initiative impaired and his character broken as 
a result of an education of involuntary obedience, but 
through it, seeds are planted in him that will make 
of him a conservative in the worst sense of this word, 
one of the enemies of any and all changes. 

It is a great fortune for the child that he does not 
always obey, that he preserves enough wilfulness not 
to be altogether submerged or destroyed. It is good 
that boys and girls are sufficiently “bad” not to be 
entirely suppressed in a moral sense by their parents 
and other adults. How sad our world would look if 
the children’s seniors had their way and if their ideal 
of the child’s obedience were realized! 

The little progress humanity has achieved is un¬ 
doubtedly due to that innate and marvelous and, yes, 
indestructible inclination to be free, to be as much 
one-self as it is possible within the boundaries of 
society. The little advancement that we see has been 
made in spite of the thousands of smaller and larger 
obstacles placed on our way by individual and group 
authorities, by systematic repression, whether with 
good or bad intentions,—through the order to obey. 

Can the parents not see that, no matetr what they 
have done for their child, he is not their property 
and owes them nothing? And what they have done 
for him has been partly or wholly compensated and 
in many cases over-compensated by that which their 
own parents have d^ne for them. But, after all, this 

85 


is irrelevant: the child has not asked them for the— 
often questionable—favor to be brought into the world, 
and under no circumstances have they a right to claim 
to have been more than nature’s tools. The care and 
the time bestowed upon the child are things which 
you cannot help giving him; it is your necessity as 
well as his. Frequently the parents have good reasons 
to be grateful to the child—or for that matter, to 
nature—for the privilege to love him, to scold him, 
to bring him up. How unhappy is usually a sterile 
couple! 

Of course, the child owes his parents friendship 
and affection, but only if they deserve it, and they 
will gain it easily if they are the child’s true and 
devoted friends and if they do not exact from him 
that horrible and accursed tribute, obedience! 

Although the child’s individuality cannot be en¬ 
tirely effaced, the methods of blind obedience often 
reduce him to a phantom, to a shadow. What is the 
child in his tender age, and what does he become after 
he has learned to obey? The child begins life as an 
original thinker, as an original searcher and his 
activity is a mirror of his thoughts. Compare him 
with himself when he is three, when he is five, when 
he is ten; compare him with the man of twenty! How 
little is mostly left of his originality! How much he 
has lost on his way to adolescence and maturity! 


Good Maimers 


The so-called good manners belong to those abstract 
things which vary so much with lands and epochs. 
They usually go hand in hand with social conditions, 
which they help to perpetuate, although some of them 
have been carried along from prehistoric or immemori¬ 
al times, and do not conform any longer to our 
present forms of life. 

Our conservatism clings with all its might to old 
methods and styles, but the majority of them, if not 
all, will have to yield to the great fundamental modifi¬ 
cations which are bound to come in the near future 
and which will sweep many of our customs to the 
scrap-heap with more energy and with greater success 
than it has ever occurred before. Nor will most of 
us weep for their loss, as there are but few people 
who subject themselves voluntarily to them or who 
feel comfortable with them. For so many of them 
are nothing but hypocritical and mendacious formal¬ 
ities whose actual object is to wrap bitter realities 
in sugared coats, to conceal bad will, enmity, hatred 
and ugliness by a nice—not always beautiful—external 


appearance, to deceive us or to make believe that if 
is deceiving us into taking a lie for the truth. Our 
good manners hide bad falsehoods. 

Of course, our manners are adapted to our economic 
life, which is based on theft and deception, and often 
they are an outgrowth from it. As soon as the neces¬ 
sity for lying will disappear, the lie in our social re¬ 
lations with one another will disappear. 

How long will it take the average child to detect 
that usually a smile is not a smile, that a handshake 
is not a handshake, that a bow is not a bow and that 
polite words are—merely words! How long will it 
take him to learn that even when people emphasize 
their assertions with such words as “truly”, “really”, 
“honestly”, “upon my honor”, they are generally 
telling an untruth, or just then the untruth is more 
flagrant and needs more re-enforcement! The ordinary 
child is not an idiot and therefore he quickly learns 
to understand the game and, if he does not guess the 
underlying putrid and immoral relations, he vaguely 
suspects that there is something to hide and that he i3 
expected to say one thing when he means another 
thing. 

Teaching good manners has no sense. Beal polite¬ 
ness cannot be taught and does not need to be taught; 
it comes naturally as a necessity in our social inter¬ 
course and will be transformed with the social evolu¬ 
tion, if we have no interest to eternize society as it is 
with all its qualities and defects. Let the next gen¬ 
eration have its own manners; let us not hinder it. 

Why should your child be forced to shake hands 


88 


—and it must needs be the right hand, the child, not 
aware of the ancient superstitious origin of this habit, 
hears to his stupefaction!—for the sake of politeness 
only, with people whom he dislikes? Why should he 
not find out for himself the necessity of being polite, 
of shaking hands, if such a necessity exists? Why 
should he repeat unwillingly and parrot-like such 
phrases as “good morning” and “thanks”, the mean¬ 
ing of which he cannot grasp—and which, by the way, 
we ourselves often repeat mechanically without really 
feeling the need to pronounce them ? It is easy to see 
that in everyone of these details there is a violation 
of the child’s personality and a necessity for the 
parents to show to their fellow-hypocrites their sub¬ 
mission to the rules. 

I would go as far as teaching the child to call his 
parents by their names and not “father” and 
“mother”, so that the signs of their supreme and 
harmful authority should disappear. 

No, a child brought up rationally will not be im¬ 
polite. He will be polite in another way than the 
usual one. If you cannot change your own forms of 
politeness, continue to live according to them, and let 
the child choose whichever form he may desire, and 
imitate it; but do not teach\nm your “good manners”, 
do not impose them upon him. Do not interfere with 
him if he attempts to adapt to his own temperament 
the manners learned from you, if he simplifies or ampli¬ 
fies them, or if he adds something to them. 


89 


Religious Ideas ^ 

Although nothing is so widely spread as those super¬ 
stitions which are usually known under the name of 
religious ideas, I am not convinced that they are a 
natural necessity for human beings. All my readings, 
which include both sides, or rather all sides, of the 
religious and anti-religious controversy, all my ob¬ 
servations among people of various beliefs and in more 
than one country, lead me to the conviction that the 
common religions are kept alive artificially by the very 
weight of their antiquity, by the fact of their being 
so universal and successful, by the fact that they 
always manage to help the governing bodies and by 
people who are materially interested in the preserva¬ 
tion of this or that church. 

All the religious systems have been a factor of 
progress at some time and in some place; that was 
when and where they, in conjunction with new eco¬ 
nomic and social aspirations, w T ere minority theories 
in opposition to the dominating powers. But their mis¬ 
fortune was that as soon as they became victorious, 
they entrenched themselves and did all they could to 
perpetuate themselves, whi^h meant that they became 

90 


conservative and reactionary forces, no matter how 
much they kept on adjusting and adapting their out¬ 
ward forms to the continually changing conditions. At 
present all the old creeds with all their organizations 
constitute a tremendous factor for reaction and an 
unspeakable danger against the development of moral 
ideas, of life and liberty. 

Of course, there are extremes in all religions, in 
the methods of practicing them as well as in the pure 
abstract idea of religion as such. But it is a mistake 
to attempt to whitewash religion from the slavery that 
it has always countenanced and from all the crimes 
that have ever been associated with it, to try to detach 
religion from the interests of the church and synagogue 
and to view it as independent from clericalism and class 
morality. All the efforts of some writers and thinkers 
who are discontented with religion as it is, but are not 
bold enough to throw it overboard altogether, all their 
endeavors to find at least a refuge in the suggestion 
that true religion is nothing but that morality which 
is dwelling in every one of us and which dictates us 
to act for the benefit of our fellow beings, and other 
similar contentions, are entirely futile and doomed 
to utter failure. 

It is also impossible to rehabilitate the figures of 
Jesus and Moses as fighters for the down-trodden pro¬ 
letariat, now, after they have been so long put to the 
service of plutocratic interests; and the few highly 
moral principles found in the New or Old Testament 
have been too much compromised by the many wild, 
barbarous and immoral rules and examples found in 
these books, and altogether drowned by the flood of 

91 


deceitful commentaries in favor of robbery and slavery. 

Our moral ideas have nothing to do with religion 
and with idolatrous practices. We can be moral with¬ 
out gods and priests, and we can be immoral with them. 
In fact, we are more immoral with and through them. 
No matter how good our intentions are, we should wipe 
out the word religion from all our truly moral teach¬ 
ings, as it has been too soiled internally and externally 
and cannot be cleaned at this late hour. If one needs 
the support of a god, he should not associate him with 
morality. 

Of course, any well-informed and really thinking 
individual will find any god a too limited theory, 
lie will see that the heavens are much more beautiful 
than they appear in the imagination of the petty pious 
minds, that everything around us is much greater and 
more wonderful than their superannuated beliefs de¬ 
scribe it. He will see that that which was thought in 
the past to be a narrow little world created and reigned 
over by an autocratic, despotic and tyrannical god who 
looks like a man, has been wiped out by science, which 
has opened before us an infinite world, so grand that 
it cannot be made or created by anyone, and which 
is more magnificent and sublime than the highest god 
invented by men. 

In the light of all experiences and of all theso 
thoughts I must declare that I have not the slightest 
doubt that any child who is not coaxed or forced in 
one way or another, or who has not been taught re¬ 
ligion, will never enter any religion by his own free will. 
The untutored child is naturally a-religious, or non-reli¬ 
gious, which is an argument against and not for teaching 


92 


Mm religion. That he would never go to church or * 
to a synagogue for praying, that he would never touch 
any of the boresome prayer-books, and that he would 
never take part in any of the operations of devotion 
if he were not obliged to do so —and this in spite of 
his religious education—is something that everyone 
knows. If this were not so, how can we explain why 
a child born of Christian parents goes to church—and 
always to the church of the same denomination as hia 
parents—and a child born of Jewish parents goes to 
the synagogue f How, if not by the fact that he is 
taken there by his parents? Why does it not happen 
that some Jewish children suddenly begin, by their 
own free will, to follow the Christian religion and 
that Christian children start by themselves to bo 
synagogue patrons? 

Children who have been taught religion or who 
have heard about the divinity are almost always skep¬ 
tical and embarrass their parents with questions which 
the latter prefer not to answer. 

Such sensible queries as “Who made god?” are 
asked by very young children only; the latter are 
usually so severely rebuked or punished for them, 
that they do not repeat them when they become older. 
Their lips become sealed and their minds clogged. 

A rational bringing-up of the child should make 
tabula rasa of all superstitious beliefs of any kind, 
regardless of what their pompous names are and no 
matter how venerable they are. 

But this does not mean that religion, as affecting 
and afflicting the greatest part of humanity, should be 
ignored. On the contrary, it should be made known 
to the child in the most impartial, unpartisan and 


unbiased way, just as we learn about the religion of 
the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans 
or of the present inhabitants of Central Africa or of 
some island in the Pacific Ocean. It must be known 
because it exists. It is a phenomenon that has figured 
and figures in the life of men. To deny or to conceal 
its existence as some freethinkers do is equally as 
foolish as to force it into the child as a part of his 
soul. Dogmatic radicals are not less unjust than dog¬ 
matic conservatives. The child may choose his ideas 
or may create new ones only if we afford him an 
opportunity to do so, and we never do it if we hand 
kim down pre-conceived opinions of any sort. 

There are those radicals who go so far as to be 
afraid even of the casual contact between their children 
and religious persons or religious influences. Nothing 
is more erroneous if the child is mentally normal and 
has been brought up rationally. As long as he has 
preserved his right to ask, “Why?” “What for?” 
“How?” and as long as he is not denied the right to 
say, “I do not want,” he is fire-proof; he will not take 
anything for granted without being shown evidences 
and reasons. Of course, it is important that the influ¬ 
ence brought to bear upon the child should not be 
too one-sided, as this would be unfair to him. 

If, after all we have done to keep the child free 
from prejudice, he happens to become a victim of re¬ 
ligious beliefs, which would be a very rare occurrence, 
we shall know that this will not have been due to any 
fault of ours; but even then we should let him pursue 
freely his way according to his convictions or senti¬ 
ments. 


94 


Making the Child Immoral 


One of the objections to the rational bringing-up 
of children is that it would make them “immoral”. 
We all know how difficult it is to differentiate between 
what is moral and what is immoral, as the notion of 
morality is so changeable. But if we take one or two 
important items which are usually measures of moral¬ 
ity almost everywhere among civilLed men, we will 
readily perceive which form of education and bring- 
ing-up is really closer to the most moral principles. 
Let us consider the respect for other people’s life and 
property, the opposite to which would be the lack of 
such respect in the professional thief, burglar and 
murderer. 

The prevailing education teaches the child theoretic¬ 
ally that stealing and doing physical harm is immoral 
and incompatible with a decent and sociable living; 
it inspires a veritable horror against the taking of 
another man’s life and of something which belongs or 
is supposed to belong to him. The child, in his simple 
and direct logic and straightforward judgment, would 
always take his superiors by their word, would liter¬ 
ally believe what they tell him and would act accord¬ 
ingly f —which would be a catastrophe from the point 
of view of present property interests and so-called 
patriotic interests,—were it not for the practical coun- 

95 


ter-teachings which he gets and which totally nullify 
the former teachings. Indeed, sometimes a recalcitrant 
child clings to the letter of the fundamental theory 
and tries to apply it at once to all situations in life. 
Then, of course, he meets with great hostility from 
all quarters, he is continually reprimanded, ridiculed 
and often severely punished, until he discovers the 
colossal contradiction between the theory and its ap¬ 
plication, and, quite disillusioned, but subdued and 
tamed, he ceases his antagonism to the existing order 
of things and lines up with the others, as one of the 
numerous and great herd of children and adults who 
accept everything with no protests or with the faintest 
of protests only. The result is our present human 
society with all its basic and collateral injustices and 
the immense difficulty of the comparatively few fight¬ 
ers for the truth to make the people see the actual 
condition of affairs. 

Together with the precepts pretending to persuade 
the child of the sacredness of life and private property, 
and as an antidote to them, other instructions are given 
him simultaneously, counteracting the possible effect 
of the former. Murder, if done by the state under a 
jury’s decision and as a revenge for other murder, 
is called execution and is permissible and legal. Ball¬ 
ing, if organized and done with the best tools and by 
an army after a war declaration by one or many rep¬ 
resentatives of the people, becomes an act of heroism, 
—not to speak of the shooting of animals, which, in 
the form of hunting, is considered a fine sport and is 
being encouraged. Robbery on a large scale, if legal 

96 


or to be excused by legal means, is held as an honor¬ 
able occupation and given to the child as a model 
for emulation. Destroying life through industrial con¬ 
ditions and through poverty is not even excused. He 
is taught to esteem and admire the rich, he learns to 
grow sentimental at the details of their lives and 
deeds. Even in the so-called “democratic ’’ republics 
he is taught directly and indirectly to kneel mentally 
before monarchs and their families and before all sorts 
of aristocrats, whose titles have their origin in robbery 
and usurpation and whose only merit it is to have been 
their parents * offspring. The common history books 
used in schools always tacitly or affirmatively approve 
all the famous plunders as indiscussable facts, and all 
the great assassins, as models to be imitated. Some of 
the most audacious land grabbings which are the foun¬ 
dation of many respected large fortunes are never 
mentioned by educators. The child is always discour¬ 
aged from asking questions concerning the beginnings 
of land property. 

In opposition to this, rational rearing of children 
would allow free course to the child’s questions and 
objections and would let his logical thinking and 
reasoning go to their extreme, indifferently what the 
consequences may be. Perhaps the child would then 
discover how deeply immoral and corrupt society is, 
perhaps he would find out the true meaning of com¬ 
merce, of capital, of war, of charity, of riches, of 
inheritance. Perhaps he would ask himself or he would 
ask us, why the land, which certainly has not been 
made by anybody, is owned by some people and no$ 

97 


by others. Perhaps he would be guided by this logic 
and once on the right track, come to see in his mature 
years the fine and concealed thread uniting in principle 
the pickpocket, the house burglar, the shop lifter, the 
safe blower, the train robber, the highwayman or the 
sea pirate on the one hand—with the store keeper, the 
shop or factory owner, the mine operator, the landlord, 
the land speculator, the stock gambler, the share holder 
and dividend getter in capitalist enterprises on the other 
hand, or with any one who lives without really working 
for a living or who has any share in the exploitation of 
others, indifferently how much the law upholds him 
or how respectable he considers himself or he is deemed 
by his fellow citizens, or how charitable or liberal 
minded he is. This comparison, which may shock many 
a good soul, is difficult or impossible to be seen by 
most people because of the mountain of untrue pre¬ 
cepts under which it has been buried during childhood, 
but would soon be discovered by a free, untrammeled 
and unsophisticated mind. Perhaps the child, while 
getting acquainted with our intricate social system 
would slowly see the full immorality of our society 
in which none is really and entirely certain not to be 
somebody else’s total or partial parasite and in which 
even the exploited do not escape from exploiting others, 
at least temporarily, no matter how indirectly or un¬ 
consciously this is done, as, for instance, by depositing 
an insignificant amount of money in a bank. Perhaps 
the mystery of this complicated but profoundly un¬ 
sound society would unfold itself to him and he would 
see how deeply it is immersed in theft and in all that 


98 


ensues from it. Indeed, the great care taken that the 
child should ignore the naked truth, shows indubitably 
that he is brought up to be one of the thieves if possible, 
but at any rate to uphold this system of robbery at 
all costs. The prevailing education in all its phases 
is one that is calculated to keep the interests of the 
band alive; it is just the education needed for an 
alliance of brigands,—of hypocritical, not frank, 
brigands. 

Nor will it be necessary or advisable to urge the 
child to inquire into such matters. All that is needful 
is that a true answer be given to his candid questions 
and that no lie, no matter how subtle or refined, be 
added to the truth in order to cover it up. 

If one sincerely compares both these systems of 
education, one will readily see which of them leads to 
more morality, to more respect for life and real prop¬ 
erty, meaning by this the respect for property ac¬ 
quired or to be acquired by labor, by manual skill, 
by talent. 

It is true, rational education might be conducive 
to subversive behavior; it might, within one or two 
generations, overthrow the present order of things, or 
rather evolve a new order,—but is it immoral to do 
that? 

On the other hand, do not believe that the child 
will always jump to the most extreme conclusion and 
that, if allowed to know or do one thing, he will surely 
do that which you consider its inevitable sequel. Do 
not judge him by yourself, do not lend him your own 
intentions, do not assume that his intentions must be 

99 


or must easily become bad or what you call bad. As 
a rule, if a full and satisfactory answer is afforded 
him, he stops then and there, like somebody whose 
hunger has been satiated, and a long time will pass 
before he will resume his inquiries in the same field. 

There should be no fear lest a rational rearing of 
the child will make of him what is commonly called a 
criminal. As far as the form of the child’s bringing- 
up has to do with his future conduct, the customary 
irrational education and the surrounding social influ¬ 
ences should rather be made responsible for criminal¬ 
ity, sharing this honor, of course, with the arch-cause 
of all our present troubles and problems, the economic 
conditions. The continual insistence as to the desir¬ 
ability of getting rich by other people’s labor, the 
contempt in which the workers are held by all, they 
themselves not excepted, the eternal laudatory remarks 
and allusions thrown everywhere and by everybody 
concerning those fortunate persons who succeed in 
getting something for nothing and concerning those 
who live easily, the general and wide-spread tendency 
to make man-killers loom high in the child’s phantasy, 
—all this adds some venom to the already large dose 
of poisoning that floods and distorts his mind and 
to the social circumstances to whose demoralization 
few people can resist. Aye, it is surprising that there 
are no more avowed and illegal criminals than there 
are; but the explanation for this is to be looked for 
in the fear of the people to commit crimes, not in their 
conviction that crime is immoral. 

Moreover, we, a society in which the amount of 

XOD 


illegal crime is a trifle compared to the tremendous 
amount of legally sanctioned theft and murder, so 
long as we continue to wade in this muddy morass, 
have certainly lost the right to show indignation at 
anything really criminal, unless we consider, as we 
frequently do, all acts advocating justice as crimes. 

Let us avoid stamping the child with our brand 
of justice and morality; let us make an honest effort 
in that direction. Let the child find new principles, 
new forms and, if he is able and if it is possible, let 
him transform even fundamentally our ideals of what 
is right and wrong. If necessary, let the child teach 
us; let the new generation be in reality a new gen¬ 
eration and inherit from us what is absolutely indis¬ 
pensable and not more. 

Stand aside, let the child pass! Do not be in his 
wayl 


101 


The Higher Morality 


True morality is the power to put ourselves in the 
place of others, to understand them so thoroughly, as 
to suffer when they are unhappy and to be joyful when 
they are happy. Of course, primarily this may be 
based on selfishness, but altruism is just another form 
of egotism, which is, to my opinion, an excellent ar¬ 
rangement. Egotism, intelligently understood, is the 
only safeguard of the individual in society and of 
society against the individual. 

Morality evolves naturally from the extremely 
selfish sentiment of justice to oneself to the necessity 
of seeing justice done to others,—to members of one’s 
own family, to fellows of the same tribe, of the same 
social class, of the same nation, of the same race. If 
developed to its extreme point, it embraces the animal 
world as well. 

To-day we have side by side people whose morality 
has been arrested at various stages of evolution. There 
are those who think nothing of the life of a person 
whose skin is dark, but who are tender-hearted to the 
lowest white man and woman. There are people whose 

102 


eara are deaf to injustices against the workers, but' 
who will weep at the sight of an injured cat. Some 
will respect human life fanatically and will not kill 
even in self defense, but will sit down with a clear 
conscience and eat a pound of meat carved out from 
an animal that was alive the previous day and that is 
anatomically and physiologically similar to us and 
mentally closer or at the same distance or perhaps just 
a trifle farther than the lowest human being is from the 
greatest genius. Some will resent an offense against their 
nation to such an extent as to go voluntarily to war, 
but at the same time will treat with the utmost cruelty 
citizens of their own nation who happen to belong to 
a powerless social class. 

Rational bringmg-up of the child would permit his 
free moral development. To be sure, he would pass 
rapidly through a moral ontogeny, as it were, would 
reproduce the various phases briefly in a more or less 
clear form within the first years of his life, and would 
finally, being yet in childhood, land on one of the 
highest points. Even under the worst educational 
methods the child usually reaches a lofty sense of 
justice; but the parents, the school and the morality 
prevailing in his surroundings in which all help to bring 
him up, “ correct” it and sometimes overcorrect it, 
that is tear down more and more of it, until, when 
he is of mature age, only a small portion of it is left. 

How often does a child reach the extreme of superi¬ 
or morality and would not permit the slaughtering of 
his pet animal for food! He may even go so far as to 
refuse to partake of animal food altogether. In such 

103 


cases he is ridiculed or punished until he is calloused 
to the cruelties of his elders. 

Nowadays morality goes together with fear. Ours 
is a scare-crow morality. To be moral and just without 
being forced to be so, without being afraid of some 
punishment, be it from a divinity or from the law, is 
an anomaly and frequently a subject for concealed 
or open derision. The conclusion is, of course, that 
the reverse, the lack of fear, will result in immorality. 

One of the characteristics of the higher morality 
is not to need the element of fear. The higher morality 
is something inherent, something without which the 
truly moral individual cannot live. Let fear from all 
sources disappear from our educational methods and 
what morality will remain will be true, untainted, 
clean,—and doubtless it will be higher than it is at 
present. 


104 


Superstition and Intolerance 

Our life, our mind is steeped in all sorts of super¬ 
stitions, besides our religious beliefs. Some of them 
have been carried by humanity since its earliest youth, 
while others have been formed in more recent periods 
of our history. Our own times are generating them 
continually. 

Superstition is the science of the non-scientific and 
non-critical mind, of the mind which requires no proof, 
no experiment in order to believe, of the mind which 
believes easily and never knows. 

Superstition never bothers about facts; it is a 
theory without facts, although sometimes, as in the 
case of our modern, quasi-scientific superstitions, it 
claims to be based on facts, which, however, on closer 
analysis, prove not to be facts at all, but beliefs. 

There can be no exact limits between true knowl¬ 
edge and superstition, because we cannot have an en¬ 
tirely impersonal science and because many things 
established as undoubted facts at one time turn out 
to be incorrect in the future. Yet, the more we learn 
to think scientifically, the more we discern between 


105 


trne and false science,—the more we free ourselves 
from superstitious beliefs. 

Such beliefs being among the greatest impediments 
to research and knowledge, it is of the utmost im¬ 
portance that the child should be taught accurate 
habits in clear thinking, should be encouraged to 
search the truth as much as possible and should always 
learn to ask for facts and to give facts. His future 
power of analysis and criticism will largely depend 
on us. Not only is his whole spiritual life and inner 
freedom and his capacity of learning intimately con¬ 
nected with his ability to examine and to reject 
a-priori conclusions, no matter by what authority they 
are approved, but frequently we jeopardize the wel¬ 
fare of his body by our implanting our own pet 
superstitions in him. We must guard as much against 
the belief in the infallibility of great statesmen or of 
the best known remedy, as against the necessity to 
step out with the right foot or the fear of number 
thirteen. 

It is good to bring in a dose of skepticism even in 
the study of the purest science, or at any rate, never 
to enter into the belief of anything so deeply as not 
to be able to abandon it. 

It is useful to learn to employ without shame the 
simple but not humiliating words: “I do not know.” 

Superstition goes hand in hand with prejudice, and 
their product is intolerance, which is one of the great¬ 
est handicaps in the forward march of humanity. I 
do not know which is the least tolerant nation in the 
■world, but surely this country has the sad distinction 


106 


of being among the first ones in this respect,—a painful 
impression which any foreigner gets soon after his 
landing and which he continues to have for many 
years. I have no doubt that one of the reasons for 
this condition is the wrong way of bringing-up Ameri¬ 
can children in school as well as in their homes. 

The type of people who have arrogated to them¬ 
selves the right to be called Americans, composed of 
comparatively few descendants of those European 
colonists who settled here up to a hundred years ago, 
but mainly of those born here of immigrated grand¬ 
parents or parents, armed with the rights and privileges 
of prior occupancy, reluctant to be mixed up with the 
newly arrived, despise the recent immigrant whom, 
although he is contributing to the development of 
the country more than he is profiting from it, they 
regard as a beggar. They have constituted themselves 
as a sort of nobility and demand that all conform to 
their standards, which have invaded the school and 
the home and which threaten to wipe out all originality. 
Grayness and similarity are the paramount virtues; all 
departures from the accepted forms in general be¬ 
havior, in dressing, talking, eating and thinking are 
frowned upon, looked upon with contempt, ridiculed 
or treated outright with violence. A man with a 
beard is mocked at, and in certain circles, rough¬ 
ly handled; a woman with a hat whose shape re¬ 
sembles a male headgear, in the best case is followed 
by children, and in the worst case by men using un¬ 
pleasant remarks; a man wearing a straw hat before 
the proper date is regarded as a great curiosity and 

107 


often stoned by rowdies; somebody who openly breaks 
the unwritten marriage rules is exposed to ostracism, 
and sometimes to physical punishment or even to 
“tarring and feathering’*—not to speak of the intoler¬ 
ance of new ideas and of the mistreatment of Negroes. 
Those who have an interest to keep social and eco¬ 
nomic conditions unchanged make use of the people’s 
intolerance in order to destroy their opponents. 

The more the possibility of expression of all those 
who possess a deep and unusual individuality is being 
restrained, the more social life is becoming dull and 
uninteresting. All American cities have been built on 
the same pattern and, with few exceptions, are exasper- 
atingly alike and characterless, just like those who 
inhabit them. The same may be said about the press, 
the theatre, the public festivities and so on. When I 
came to the United States, an old inhabitant told me 
that “with one key one can open all the doors in 
this country.” I found subsequently that he was per¬ 
fectly right not only in a figurative sense, but almost 
literally. I would add to his words that all the minds 
may also be opened with the same key, which may be 
partly true for any place on the globe, but which is 
more true for this than for any other civilized nation. 

I am sorry to say that this wicked tendency, this 
nefarious work to scare away originality, has been 
frightfully successful and one of its unfortunate con¬ 
sequences has been to create an atmosphere entirely 
inimical to the development of the fine arts , which, 
as we all know, need a medium of tolerance, of free¬ 
dom, of real life. 


108 


In education as well as everywhere else, the request 
for tolerance must be all-sided. It must go so far as 
to allow the existence of ideas and forms which are 
not desirable even to radically inclined people, to 
radically inclined parents. 

The child absorbs like a sponge everything he sees 
and hears. It is easy to poison and rot his mind with 
intolerant sentiments. Therefore, in this respect as 
in many others, we have to be constantly on our guard; 
any of our gestures, any of our words may be respons¬ 
ible for a long arrest or retardation of social, eco¬ 
nomic, artistic, yea, scientific progress. Let us begin 
by cleaning ourselves from old, worm-eaten beliefs and 
habits and let us counteract actively the wrong teach¬ 
ings of the child’s surroundings. 


109 


The Child’s “Vices 1 ’ 

I do not believe in the old theory, that we are 
innately bad, brutal and anti-social; nor do I share 
the opinion that we are born with the best and sweet¬ 
est dispositions. It is a mistake to exaggerate either 
our defects or our qualities. The child’s propensities, 
as W’cll as the adult’s, depend principally upon his 
environment, upon his opportunities, upon his condi¬ 
tions. \7e are all products, even though we in turn 
become the agents of other products. 

I am thoroughly convinced, however, that the child 
is, as a whole, in every respect better than the adult 
and that he is certainly not worse. He has not had time 
yet to acquire our defects. 

To take but two instances: the child is accused of 
cruelty and of mendacity. 

Any competent and fair observer of children knows 
that, as a rule, when they are yet very young and 
maltreat other children or little animals, this is no 
sign of “badness”; in fact, it is through no fault of 
theirs. Until after eight or ten years of age they do 

110 


not quite realize what death means. Even when they 
talk about it, even while they threaten their little 
companions during a fight that they will “kill” them, 
they do so by imitation, they do not have a distinct 
perception of the significance of this word. In the 
first years of their life, although they have suffered 
pain repeatedly, they do not exactly understand what 
it means to others. They are unable to associate the 
cause and the effect to such a degree as to see clearly 
the consequences of torturing an animal or of beating 
other children. 

It is true that the child, under normal circumstan¬ 
ces, until about five or six, rarely later, is a little 
savage living in the midst of civilized adults,—that 
is, adults who have learned to restrict or to suppress 
some of their thoughts, desires and actions. But the 
savage, the primitive man is usually not more cruel 
and not less social than the civilized specimen taken 
as a whole. The child’s so-called passion to destroy 
or to hurt is only different in degree from that of the 
adult; often it is weaker, at any rate it is never as 
refined in the child as in the grown-up. Necessity, 
adaptation to surroundings, resistance of those with 
whom he associates, teach him how to behave. To thi3 
may be added moral suasion, which usually has a 
very good effect. As soon as somebody explains him 
in a convincing manner—a few explanations at inter¬ 
vals may be needed—the meaning of cruelty, a normal 
child will not only desist from harmful actions, but 
in his imperturbable logic he will not tolerate them 
in ourselves and will correct us whenever our deeds 


111 


do not conform to our words—which happens so very 
frequently. 

But how can we expect the child to be good-hearted 
at the sight of such miserable examples in his closest 
proximity? Is it not probable that the majority of 
normal children would be much kinder than they are 
if they never witnessed our own open or half-veiled 
cruelty? Indeed it is extremely rare that a child 
should not see grown-up folks flog children or fight 
among themselves. Nothing is as frequent as ugly 
scenes between father and mother in the presence of 
the child, between his parents and his older sisters 
and brothers, between his relatives and his parents, 
between neighbors. Every day he is a spectator of 
brutal acts among other children who in turn have 
learned them from adults. Rude words, repugnant 
gestures, horrible allusions are so to say continuous 
and ubiquitous performances. 

Indeed, if we compare the child impartially with 
those who pretend to be his teachers and models, we 
are stricken by the fact that he is usually superior to 
them and we are surprised that he is not worse than 
he is. 

Not only is the atmosphere around the child filled 
with brutality, but he feels its effect on his own body. 
He is being slapped and whipped at home and in 
school, by his parents and often enough by his teach¬ 
ers. How, pray, can he, as a finished product, be much 
better than his surroundings? 

Many parents teach the child directly to be re¬ 
vengeful, beginning from the stupid suggestion to “hit 

112 


the door” against which he hurt himself and ending 
with the swearing of vengeance at the neighbor be¬ 
cause her boy behaved insolently. 

When it happens that a little tot of three is jealous 
of his new-born baby-brother and punches him, whose 
fault is it? Whose, if not the parents’, who had habitu¬ 
ated him to their immoderate kisses and caresses and 
who, now, suddenly, have turned all their attention and 
affection toward the new baby, the intruder, and are 
neglecting the older child? 

We also accuse the child of being a liar. At the 
beginning of this book I have shown that many adults 
understand so little of child psychology that when¬ 
ever he is ‘‘making up” or “making believe” some¬ 
thing, they think he is lying. They do not know 
that he is no more a liar than Mr. Sothern when he 
plays Hamlet. In previous pages I explained that 
the lie is one of our institutions, one of the pillars 
upon which civilized society rests and that the child 
lives among all sorts of liars. Under such conditions 
we cannot expect him to be a truth seeker and a lover 
of truth. Besides, it has already been stated that he 
is forced to lie in order to defend himself against his 
parents and superiors. All this makes it plain that 
the child must become a liar, but it does not prove 
that he is naturally a liar. On the contrary, I have not 
the slightest doubt that a normal child, living among 
truthful people and not being compelled to lie for his 
own safety, would never tell a lie. 




113 



The Only Child 

With the prevailing system of bringing up the 
child, the only child in a family is a big and difficult 
problem. Usually he is so precious to the parents that 
they devote themselves entirely to his welfare or to 
what they regard as his welfare. They pamper him 
and nurse him and watch him too much. They give 
him away all of their time. He becomes conceited 
and priggish and unfit to live with his fellow-children 
and later with his fellow-men. He is in the company 
of adults more than it is good for him. He does not 
encounter sufficiently the misfortunes and struggles 
met with by other children and so necessary for the 
formation of the character. His life is too easy. 

But all this is not an argument against the control 
of the number of children; it is an argument for 
rational education. Under a rational upbringing the 
above condition does not obtain. The only child comes 
in conflict with almost all the ordinary difficulties in 
life; he is not spared the hardships and sufferings due 
to events and to his own mistakes. His parents do 
not protect him and shield him more than if he had 

114 


a number of brothers and sisters. As far as his parents 
are concerned, he gets no exceptional concessions, he 
enjoys no extraordinary benefits. Of course, he lacks 
the social intercourse of other children in the family 
and the troubles that would arise from his association 
with them. However, this is inevitable, and wise 
parents will give him an opportunity to meet children 
of both sexes and will do all in their power to make 
him get acquaintances and, if possible, tie friendships 
with as many playmates as he may desire. He will 
be permitted to bring them to the house if he so 
wishes,—a permission, by the way, which all children 
should have under all circumstances. 

Here is the place to add that some children, no 
matter whether they are alone or many in their family, 
simply do not like society and after they have chosen 
one or two friends and until they have made the choice, 
they do not enjoy the company of other children. 
When this is the case we have to make sure that the 
child is physically and mentally normal and that he 
is not a masturbant or under some depraving influ* 
ence. If these questions can be answered in the nega¬ 
tive, it is our duty to leave the child alone and to 
avoid imposing the society of other children on him. 
Among children as among adults the tastes and tem¬ 
peraments and dispositions vary, 


115 


What Is Order? 


Any of the expressions adopted to designate quali¬ 
ties or defects may be interpreted or understood in one 
way or the other according to the viewpoint from which 
we judge. Nothing is certain, nothing is absolute. Just 
as the words “good” and “bad”, “big” and “small”, 
“light” p d “dark”, “clean” and “dirty” are inter¬ 
changeable terms, so we may call “disorder” what 
others call “order” and vice-versa. 

Some parents are so much imbued with the desire 
for order, that they change it from a quality into a 
defect. Such people belong to the category of those 
unhappy creatures who spend and lose their lives try¬ 
ing unsuccessfully to put things in order and always 
postpone and never accomplish their real work. They 
persecute their children and render them uncomfort¬ 
able by seeking to make them love order. 

Now order in time and space is essential for eco¬ 
nomy in space and time, for effective work, for har¬ 
mony. In nature a certain kind of order establishes 
itself without our intervention. Artificial order may 
be useful or it may defeat its own purpose and result 

116 


in disorder. All our rules of conduct and all our laws 
and their application, if viewed from a higher stand¬ 
point, are ridiculous and hopeless tasks; they are 
foolish even as temporary measures; they usually pro* 
voke and breed disorder. They need constant change 
and adaptation, which is impossible, life being so rich, 
so intrieated that the wisest men cannot foresee the 
events and situations caused by the relationship be¬ 
tween men and men and between men and nature. 
Necessity is our best teacher of order and of the prop¬ 
er distance between objects, between people, and be¬ 
tween things and people. We need no rule to tell 
ns how close we have to stand to the person with whom 
we converse, etc. 

Children are disorderly. But we cannot teach them 
by force or by means of punishments to be fond of 
order. All we can do is to show them our example. 
If we like order, without being cranky about it, they 
will, in the long run, acquire habits of order. We also 
can emphasize the consequences of disorder, as often 
as we have an occasion. 

It is easy to prove that if things are not put back 
into the same place, they cannot be found when 
they are needed, and that a table on which books 
and papers and other objects have been thrown about 
irregularly or littered, leaves insufficient room for 
work. 

The child can only grasp the need of a certain 
degree of order if he is allowed to work, to make 
mistakes, to suffer from their consequences and to bear 
the responsibility. If you put his desk in order for 

117 


him, you cannot demand that he should keep it as you 
left it. Besides, your taste may differ from his taste, 
so that your order may be disorder for him. More¬ 
over, he will never know where his pencil lies, if you 
and not he place it in the proper corner or drawer. 

If you want the child to put his clothes in place, 
let him have a separate spot for them. Of course, I 
am aware of the fact that most of the workers 1 chil¬ 
dren cannot have such conveniences, but then, in such 
cases we should not insist in demanding order from 
them. 

However, even if your educational methods are the 
most rational and even if you succeed to inculcate in 
children a sense of order, do not expect them to trans¬ 
late it into practice when they are yet very young. 
With very few exceptions, children, especially boys,— 
but also girls if their feminine qualities have not been 
brought too much in evidence by their education—, 
will not commence to fully appreciate the importance 
of order as adults understand it, until they are past 
twelve or fourteen years old. 

Some parents go too far in the opposite direction. 
They are delighted to see their child indulging in the 
greatest disorder and, of course, they never discourage 
him from it. They have heard that disorder in every 
day life and bohemianism are somehow associated with 
art and in this way they hope to make an artist of 
him. Usually, they succeed only in making him sloppy 
and slovenly. They do not know that, while some 
artists have bohemian habits, many of the greatest 
artists have been very orderly and that others were 

118 


disorderly Sn appearance only, but were very melbod- 
ical and regular in their work. They do not realize 
that where it exists, bohemianism is the effect and not 
the cause of the artistic temperament. Many an in¬ 
capable man, trying to imitate the artists or to copy 
the false descriptions of them, went as far as learning 
to drink and lead a dissolute life and no further. 


Work and Responsibility 

As soon as his age permits it the child should be 
invited to take part in some of the work done in the 
house and for the household. He should bear his share 
of responsibility in the home, but, of course, his duties 
should not exceed his mental and physical abilities. 
As a rule, he will be eager to help, and will be thank¬ 
ful for the opportunity offered him as well as for 
the importance with which he will be treated. 

It is not good to render to the child more services 
than it is necessary and so to make him lazy and ir¬ 
responsible. But it is just as bad to abuse his willing¬ 
ness to be useful and to take advantage of his depend¬ 
ency and powerlessness in order to force him to work 
excessively. As far as possible, too great sacrifices 
should not be demanded from the child; plenty of 
time should be allowed him for playing. 

It is an injustice to force the older children to 
give up their amusements and interests and to put 
them in charge of the younger children and babies,—• 
which is usually a misfortune for both the watchers 
and the watched. It is wrong to ask any child to do 
more of the housework than it is his share; or to do 
that part of the task which is obviously the parents' 
portion. 


120 


That child labor is a curse from every point of 
view is admitted by all thinking and feeling men and 
women. It is a shame and disgrace that it has not 
yet been abolished in most of the civilized countries. 

Among the working people and particularly in 
families with too many children, the exploitation of 
the children by the parents—and therefore indirectly 
by the parents ’ exploiters—cannot be remedied, as 
long as present economic conditions last. But even in 
such families it should be avoided as far as possible 
and the parents should never forget that it is not the 
child’s fault if they did not have enough foresight 
and if they bred too many successors. 

However, this selfish and immoderate employment 
of the child is general. 

In the United States it is a sort of fashion to send 
young children to work during their vacations, not 
only in families where the few cents earned by the 
child are wanted, but even there where no material 
need whatever exists. This is wrong. 

Many parents who can afford to give their child 
as much free time as he requires, prefer to tender him 
all sorts of unpleasant jobs, just to hold him in sub* 
mission. 

For some parents and adults the child is a servant 
and he is treated as such. 

I have known a father whose children had to take 
off his boots and socks and to tickle his sweat-laden 
and ill-smelling toes until he fell asleep, and I have 
known an officer in a military jail who required the 
same service from some of the inmates. 


121 


The Kindergarten 


I am not a friend of the so-called kindergarten as 
it is today. But I know the plight of the mother of a 
large family with much housework or of the mother 
who must go to work in the shop. She cannot take 
care of the smaller children, of those of pre-school age, 
or at least she cannot do so the whole day. 

She is compelled to send them to “Kindergarten.” 

But many women who have plenty of time to 
devote to the study of the child and to be in his 
society also wish to get rid of him, as they consider 
him a nuisance, and they send him to the kindergarten, 
too. 

An ideal kindergarten, which would be a real gar¬ 
den where the children could play and develop freely, 
one where they would bud and grow like flowers, 
would be a necessary institution. It would relieve 
many a poor, over-worked mother for a few hours 
daily, and what is more, it would often free the child 
for a while from the grip of many an ignorant, tyran¬ 
nous mother. It would give the child what he needs 
so badly, the society of other children, and the super- 

122 


vision of intelligent, expert and rational educators. 
But unfortunately such a kindergarten is rare, if it 
exists at all. Usually it is a place where the child is 
kept much indoors and where he is disciplined and 
his will is bent and broken early, if it is not a religious 
or semi-religious institution, where nice prayers are 
taught, where reactionary and wildly patriotic songs 
are served and where the eye meets only pious and 
conservative pictures on the walls. As a rule the kin¬ 
dergarten teachers, whose task, if well understood, 
requires more skill and thought than that of any of 
the teachers and professors up to the highest degrees 
of learning, are recruited from among those types of 
women who are even inferior to the common public 
school teacher and have even less vision than the latter. 
Therefore under the circumstances, the child is better 
off in the average home than in the kindergarten. 

The remedy in the case of large families is to be 
found, as usual, in prevention. . ,, 


123 


The School and the Home 


One of the characteristics of a good school is its 
close connection and harmonious co-operation with the 
child’s home, or rather the extension of the school’s 
work to the child’s home. But good schools are ex¬ 
tremely rare; therefore, there is usually a sort of 
hostility between the common public school and the 
home. 

In many cases the children go to school for no other 
reason than that its attendance is compulsory. Among 
uneducated parents this is easily explicable; a large 
number of them do not see the advantage even of an 
elementary education. But a good deal of more or 
less educated parents display but a lukewarm interest 
in the teachings which their children get in school. 

The silent or avowed enmity between the school 
and the child is reflected in the feelings of the parents 
toward the Echool, and with this is mixed the old, 
not yet forgotten antagonism which slumbers some¬ 
where in the subconseience of the pupils of yesterday. 

With very few exceptions, all schools for the young 
manage to make themselves disagreeable. The school 

124 


usually appeals to the child for a short period, until 
he finds out that it does not come up to his expecta¬ 
tions, until he commences to feel in a vague way that 
school makes him more unhappy than happy. Most 
of the children who do like their schools for a longer 
time, do so on account of the society of other children 
which they get there, but not because of the teachers 
or the teaching, not because of the school as such. 
Very few schools are fit for children. Any school to 
which all normal children do not go with pleasure at 
all times, to which they do not run with enthusiasm, 
is bad. 

I hope to write a book on “the child and the school,” 
in which I would describe the present school systems 
and would contrast them with rational school educa¬ 
tion. But here my intention is just to touch upon 
the relation between the school and the home, and one 
of the problems that sometimes present themselves in 
this respect is the refusal of a bold child to go to 
school, either temporarily or permanently. 

Yes, here and there it does happen that a child 
has more strength of character than his comrades and 
obeys his natural inclination to freedom; he rebels 
against the school. Instead of going to his class room, 
he goes for a walk, looks into the shops, listens to 
market women or follows the course of the river. 
All those of us who were ever guilty of plaving truant, 
know how much more instructive it was than the teach¬ 
er’s unsuccessful efforts. Unfortunatelv, this never 
lasts very long, as the “crime” is soon discovered and 
usually severely punished and an end is put to it 

125 


without any deeper inquiry into the causes of the 
escapade. 

The next time this happens to your child just try 
to gain his confidence, so that you may ascertain his 
motives and so, with his help, find a way out of the 
difficulty according to the situation created by his 
particular case and according to the child’s tempera¬ 
ment. The details of the settlement of the question 
cannot be given here, as they are necessarily very vari¬ 
able. One thing is certain, that it would be a grave 
mistake to punish the child or to bring him to school 
by force. Usually there is something wrong with the 
school and not with the child. It is not your problem, 
but the school’s. Be friendlier to the child than ever 
and protect him, no matter what the consequences. 

Undoubtedly, no rationally brought up child will 
hide his opinion of the school and will make believe 
that he is going to school when he goes elsewhere. 
Not being in any danger for telling the truth, he does 
not need to tell a lie. 

I am sorry to say that in such cases as the child’s 
declining to go to school, you generally cannot expect 
any intelligent aid or co-operation from the school 
itself. If you do not believe me, go to school and 
argue the question with the principal or the teacher. 
You will be surprised to see how little prepared 
they are to deal with such complications and how 
little they understand children,—that is, how little 
they know their own profession, which is not some¬ 
thing extraordinary, as very few people know their 
own trade or profession. Of course, this applies to 

126 


the majority of the teachers, but fortunately not to 
all, as there are some few beautiful and honorable 
exceptions, although not so many as in France or in 
Germany. 

Whenever the school is rather a source of misin¬ 
formation than of education, as it has happened so 
often during and since the war of 1914-1919, it is the 
duty of intelligent and thinking parents to counteract 
the poison instilled by the teacher, by telling the child 
the real truth about existing conditions. The conflict 
resulting in the child’s mind, while deplorable, is in¬ 
evitable and is certainly more desirable than to leave 
the child with a wrong and misleading impression. 

Where possible, progressive parents should co-oper¬ 
ate to have their own school. 

In very rare instances one of the parents is able 
to be the child’s teacher, at least in the earlier years. 
Whenever this is possible, it is a blessing for the child 
and a great enjoyment and a profit to the parents, 
provided that the home teaching (it may take place 
in shops, factories, streets, parks, farms, museums, ex¬ 
hibitions, etc., and only from time to time at home) 
is based on rational ideas. If it follows the common 
school methods, it is worse than school teaching, and 
the latter, with all its defects, is preferable. By the 
way, the mother or the father who combines the neces¬ 
sary time, the required aptitudes and talents as well 
as the desire to teach his or her own child, would do 
well to invite two or three more children of about the 
same age and caliber to take part in the studies, works 
and plays. The writer has given to his child four 

127 


hours daily for about seven years during kindergarten 
and public school age. 

Parents should visit the school as often as possible 
and should not be ashamed to criticize the teachers’ 
work and the entire system. They should not forget 
that the schools are theirs. Organized meetings of 
the parents—preferably held in the school auditorium 
—and discussions concerning the theory and practice 
of education, as well as the difficulties encountered by 
them in the children’s bringing-up, would be very de¬ 
sirable. All parents could benefit from an exchange 
of opinions and from the experiences of others. 

Constant vigilance and control of the school would 
repay itself. This would force the teachers and the 
school authorities to be careful. 

Whenever it is not absolutely necessary, it is pre¬ 
ferable not to accompany the child to and from school, 
as that makes him rely less on himself and deprives 
him of an occasion to learn more by himself. 


Mistakes of Radical Parents 


Radical parents often make the mistake to teach 
the child empty, to him meaningless, phrases about 
capitalism and proletariat, to ask him to memorize and 
recite or declaim revolutionary poems, etc., believing 
that in this way they will convert him into a revolu¬ 
tionist. 

While there is no limit to the things and facts and 
events and phenomena a child should learn when he 
is interested in them and if they are properly explained 
to him, it is foolish and entirely useless to fill up his 
mind with mere words, no matter how high sounding 
they are. They will not stick to him, as in that form 
they can never be assimilated. 

But principally should we avoid to fall into this 
error because it is wrong to try to make a revolution¬ 
ist of the child, just as it would be to do all in our 
power to change him into a reactionary. Our only 
duty is to help him develop himself. If your social 
ideas are right, you may reasonably expect that a 
rationally brought up child will naturally come to them. 
But let us never be absolutely certain that we are 
right. Let us rather add a grain of skepticism even to 
those ideas about which we are enthusiastic. 

Among the conflicts between children and parents, 

129 


one kind consists in this, that the children make pro¬ 
gress, become more advanced and leave their parents 
more or less far behind them. This is as old as human¬ 
ity. I can imagine the primitive father, at the occasion 
of the discovery of fire, the greatest discovery of man, 
enraged against his children for adopting the new fad 
that will surely burn the world,—of course, after 
having clubbed the discoverer himself to death. Dis¬ 
agreements between parents and children concerning 
the right of the latter to chose their mates, or to 
change some conventional customs, or to associate with 
the apostle of a novel and strange religious sect or to 
subscribe to the latest astronomical theory contradict¬ 
ing the bible, are all of the same kind. They are natur¬ 
al where the parents are too conservative and recal¬ 
citrant, and lack open-mindedness and perspective. 
But they will never occur with tolerant and easily 
yielding parents, who, even if they fail to be persuaded, 
are willing to allow their children to have their own 
point of view and to act accordingly. 

But here in the United States, among our immi¬ 
grants, w r e see an interesting example of the reverse: 
many parents are progressive, sometimes quite radical¬ 
ly minded, while their children are conservative. This 
is explained by the fact that the parents were con¬ 
verted to their ideas in Europe or in this country 
among their fellow-countrymen, while their children 
were abandoned completely to the influence of the 
Americanizing school, which often means to a reac¬ 
tionary influence. The children received a one-sided 
education and nothing to counteract or balance it. 


130 


The parents, in their ignorance of conditions in this 
country, having heard that this is a modern republic, 
seeing that the word liberty is so frequently pro¬ 
nounced in connection with the United States and 
having read that we once had an admirable war for 
independence, put their whole faith in our schools. 
The result was in the majority of the cases that their 
children grew up full of prejudices and with the desire 
to keep intact all that is old and venerable and to 
fight to a finish all new ideas and all that may result 
in a change of conditions. 

Such parents are not altogether blameless. Being 
too busy acquiring knowledge and making propaganda 
among their shop companions, they have forgotten and 
neglected their own families, their wives and children. 
Even some of the best radical leaders, bent upon con¬ 
quering a new w’orld, have lost their own children, 
whom they have estranged, rarely talking to them, 
rarely playing with them. And now they reap what 
they have sown. They have largely earned the con¬ 
tempt of their offspring who are ashamed of their 
parents,—mere foreigners and radicals. 

Perhaps another cause for this particular discrep¬ 
ancy between parents and children is the error of some 
of the parents not to live up to their principles, not 
knowing that nothing wins and convinces as much as 
the living action, and that words alone are sterile. 

Sometimes this opposition of the children to their 
parents results in sad tragedies; but once the abyss 
yawns between them, there is no remedy. It is as 
elementary as the clouds or the rain. 

131 


Means and Aims 


It is wrong to make a too great distinction between 
the means and the aim. Very often the only aim we 
are able to attain is the means by which we are striv¬ 
ing toward it. The means are the aim. We may never 
accomplish what we set out to do, but our whole 
life is composed of means. Therefore, our means 
should be worthy of the final, perhaps never to be 
reached, aim. 

Our behavior toward the child should be so that 
he may become naturally penetrated with this point 
of view, although he may not accept it in his later 
life as a line of conduct. And, as already pointed out 
in this book, the whole scheme of the child’s bringing- 
up, as far as a scheme is possible or permissible, should 
be such that our aim be not to make of him a man. 
Nor should we make him feel that this must be his 
ultimate goal, as if the adult age is something perfect 
and beyond the need of correction. We must act in 
such a manner that the child gains the impression that 
the years of childhood are important in themselves, 
so that he should not feel his present weakness and 
should not keep on postponing important works for 
a later age. 


Some Objections Answered 


Many people, especially those who call themselves 
practical, believe sincerely that a rational bringing-up 
of the child will make of him “too much of an indi¬ 
vidual’ ’ and will force him to have a too hard struggle 
in his later life. 

It all depends on what we understand by the word 
“practical”. To my mind, to be practical means to 
be able to use all possible means which will make us 
happy. Of course, we may sometimes feel happy 
when we suffer or make ourselves uncomfortable for 
the sake of a dear friend. We may willingly and 
gladly sacrifice our freedom or even our life for our 
ideas, probably because, in the last analysis, we find 
more happiness in so doing than in living a quiet, safe 
life. But I cannot regard as happy or approaching 
the ideal of personal happiness all those whose life 
is nothing but a series of concessions to society, the 
family, traditions, conventions, prejudices and super¬ 
stitions; those are a mere feather in the wind. Those 
who recklessly throw away their own individuality, 
who every day adjourn the fulfillment of their desires 

133 


until death overcomes them, have turned their back 
to happiness and have walked away in the opposite 
direction. They may make money, they may achieve 
a reputation as “good” citizens, as “honorable” men 
and women, but they are unhappy—and consequently 
not practical. 

And as to the objection that a strong individual 
has a too hard struggle with his fellow-men, life is 
nothing but struggle and without struggle there is no 
true life. Struggle is not undesirable. 

Of course, if you have no opinion of your own, 
if you have no will, if you look in every respect like 
your neighbors, if you are not yourself, if you efface 
yourself in the general current, if you follow the 
crowd, if you never affirm yourself, your way will 
be easy. But is this life? Or is it suicide? And is it 
worth to pay such a high price in order to facilitate 
one’s contest ? Is it practical,—practical from a loftier 
point of view? Is this mental and moral Procrustean 
operation worthy of its results? 

Some base their objection to our ideas on the fear 
that rationally brought up children will be precocious . 

We keep our children so much back intellectually, 
we waste their time and retard their development in 
school and at home so much, that any normal child 
who has matured mentally in the right time, will seem 
precocious in comparison with the others. Instead 
of calling a prodigy a child who wants to know cer¬ 
tain things before our “programs” allow him to do 
so, we should call the other children—and ourselves— 
belated or back numbers. 


134 


It is not true that a child under rational education 
becomes ripe too soon, that he loses his innocence too 
early, that he possesses less of that rich, great and 
childish imagination which makes him weave his im¬ 
possible dreams. The more real socientific knowledge 
he has, the more historic events he has learned, 
the more beautiful things he has seen, the richer his 
fancy,—provided we have not tried to destroy his 
childishness intentionally. I have known children who 
were held as exceptionally bright, but who, on closer 
acquaintance, proved to be just ordinary children who 
had had unusual opportunities,—opportunities which 
are exceptional at present, but which should be afford¬ 
ed every youngster. 

After all, to be prepared early, to have as many 
of the various perplexing childish questions as pos¬ 
sible answered sooner than it is customary, means to 
begin life earlier, means to prolong life and to accom¬ 
plish more than is usually the case, which, of course, 
far from being harmful, is a great advantage. 

Children cannot all have the same degree of bril¬ 
liancy, but they all need the fullest possibilities to 
develop and learn. We cannot always discover their 
talents or future talents, as frequently the best, the 
most gifted ones seem stupid or below the average, 
either because they are too absorbed in their own 
dreams to be interested in common, every-day mat¬ 
ters, or because they are misunderstood, or because 
they are not permitted to do what they prefer, or 
further because they would not show their capacities 

135 


to their inferior parents and teachers, fearing instinc¬ 
tively to expose themselves to ridicule. 

Finally, if I knew that real precocity were possible, 
I should not see any valid reason why exceptional 
children might not be allowed to become precocious. 
But I am convinced that there is no precocious child 
as this word is commonly understood. 

I would object, though, to all cramming and stuff¬ 
ing methods used for the purpose of making of the 
child a learned and serious person at any cost. This 
would violate his individuality, would curtail his 
happy childish hours and would transform him into 
a monstrous being. I do not believe in the useful¬ 
ness of learning the alphabet or reading and writing 
at three, of studying Greek at a very early age, or, 
as it were, of buttering the child’s bread with Virgil 
verses. 


136 


Final Remarks 


Among public spirited men, that is among those 
people who would probably be best fitted to become 
educators, there are but few interested in the child. 
They do not realize the importance of the child: they 
do not see that he represents the future and that he 
is the best material with which to work. 

Rational education does not foist on the child any 
beliefs, theories or ideas, but leaves his mind free and 
open. It always gives a reason or looks for a reason 
why anything is said or done. It listens to the child 
and encourages him to express himself. It tells him 
the truth. 

At the first glance a rationally brought up child 
may appear to be like other children, but he is differ¬ 
ent. In the same way a chronically ill man may look 
externally like a perfectly healthy person, but the in¬ 
timate life of one is entirely unequal to that of the 
other; the function of the organs, the condition of the 
cells in one and the other differ as much as health 
differs from disease. The experienced eye will not fail 
to recognize and to single out the child who has been 

137 


brought up freely. His movements, his gestures, his 
talk, his behavior, his spirit will be distinct from those 
of any other child. 

I do not claim that children educated along rational 
lines will become the men and women whom you or 
I would like, or that they would satisfy your ideal of 
men and women or mine. This is not necessary. They 
may be better than we desire them to be; they may be 
too advanced for us to understand them. But they will 
be characters, they will be internally free individuals, 
and only such individuals can free the world from 
its present bondage and misery. 


138 


THIRD PART 


Instances From Life 




The following brief notes are meant to serve as 

illustrations to the foregoing theoretical discussion. 
They represent but a few of my numerous observations 
gathered through my direct and indirect association 
with children. They have been taken at random and 
published without any arrangement. 

On the Ferry Boat.—A woman with her five year 
old boy. She gives him a lesson how to lie. 

—The man there will carry you away, if you don’t 
behave. 

—If you don’t sit still, the policeman will arrest 
you. 

She does not let him free for one minute. She 
does not allow him to run or walk, although there is 
not the slightest danger in doing so. She forbids him to 
take off his cap and to stand closer to that side from 
which he could observe the passing big ship which 
interests him so very much and which is certainly in¬ 
structive for him. 

She slaps him on his finger when, with his childish 
frankness, he points to a woman with a ridiculous hat. 
She objects to any of his critical remarks. A friend 
who knows her informs me that she is an advocate 
of “free speech’’ among adults. 

Ml 


In the Train.—At Summit, New Jersey, our train 
is being hitched on to another train. The operation 
is very interesting and worth watching. Still, most 
parents are reluctant to let their children stand near 
the door. But this mother seems to be more intelli¬ 
gent than the average; she says nothing when her 
little girl leaves her seat and, full of curiosity, is ab¬ 
sorbed in the spectacle. However, the other passen¬ 
gers are restless. One woman goes over to the child 
and whispers something to her. The little girl does 
not heed her. The conductor gives her a piece of his 
mind, but cannot convince her that to stand near the 
door, inside the car, is dangerous, because it is not. 
She continues to be attentive to the approaching train 
and to the trainman w 7 lio is ready to couple it to our 
train. An old man makes her a little speech, which 
is untrue from the beginning to the end. But she 
brushes him aside and he becomes angry. 

—You ought to behave yourself! What is the mat¬ 
ter with you? 

And he fails to see that he is the one who does not 
behave and that there is something the matter with 
the grown-up people. 

A Failure. — The mother has gone to market. 
The nine year old boy wants to surprise her. He 
know's that w 7 hen she returns she will start to cook 
and she wall need hot water. He fills a vessel with 
w r ater and puts it on the fire. He is happy at the 
thought that his mother will be glad and will praise 
his foresight and skill. But the receptable cracks, the 

142 


water leaks out and the boy, awfully frightened and 
in haste to hide his failure, the cause of which he does 
not understand, wipes the gas range quickly with a 
clean table-cloth, the only cloth in sight. The mother, 
returning, finds him in this predicament and, after long 
mutual explanations, accompanied by the child’s tears 
and by the mothers’s promise of a punishment (to be 
administered by the father, as she says) worthy of the 
crime, the little one learns incidentally that his mistake 
consisted in having used an earthen vessel instead of 
the aluminum pot. 

The mother remains convinced that it is wrong 
to let children, especially boys, meddle in kitchen work. 
She is mistaken. This last failure was due precisely 
to the fact that the boy was never permitted to go 
into the kitchen. 

A Party.—After school time. Six little girls sitting 
around a table in an ice-cream store. Talking. They 
disturb nobody. Just toward the end, when they are 
ready to go, a woman comes in, pale with anger, walks 
up to the group, gesticulates to one of the children, 
shakes her violently by the shoulders and tells her 
something in a low voice. 

—But, mother, it is Nellie’s birthday, and we had 
a little party, replies the girl in a loud whisper. 

The mother again tells her something that I cannot 
hear. 

—But, mother, we did nothing bad. 

Another conversation, inaudible to me, during 
which the child is blushing and the mother is making 


143 


quick gestures, ends with the word “home!” uttered 
hy the woman. And she pushes the girl toward the 
door. The child cries and goes out. 

Guests. —Evening. There are guests in the house. 
One of them is particularly interesting. He has just 
returned from a long voyage and talks charmingly 
about his experiences. The boy listens attentively. 
Undoubtedly, he is learning more real geography to¬ 
night than he has learned in school for a whole year. 

But the father asks him to go to bed, as the boy 
must get up in time to go to school the next morning. 
After a few weak protests and tears, the child leaves 
the room, while the grown-up people continue to stay 
and talk around the lamp. All are in good cheer. The 
intellectual atmosphere is delightful. Nobody thinks 
of the boy. 

Matches.—-The father has dropped the match box 
and orders the child to pick up the matches. The latter 
obeys. A few minutes later the child drops the box 
and the father beats him severely. 

Meat.—Father and mother are at the theatre. 
Johnnie, nine years old, is alone with his aunt, the 
school teacher, a young girl. She serves him supper. 
He never likes meat and his mother has despaired to 
make him eat it. But now his aunt puts some meat 
before him. He says: “You know, auntie, that I 
hate meat.” 

—But it is good for you and you ought to eat it. 

—Oh, please .... I cannot. 


144 


—Just taste it. The way I fixed it up, you 11 
like it. 

The boy feels that reasoning will not help. He 
knows by experience that his only weapon in such 
cases is lying. He makes believe that he tastes the 
meat. 

—It is not good. 

—You did not taste it. 

—I did. 

^-You did not. 

—Yes, I did. 

—You liar! 

And the aunt gives him a 4 ‘sound beating”, not 
because he did not want to eat the meat, as she ex¬ 
plains, but “because he lied.” And she does not com¬ 
prehend why he lied. 

A Song.—The parents and all the adults are sup¬ 
posed to be infallible. They never break anything. 
They do not trust their children, whom they accuse 
of being mischievous and careless; they forbid them 
to handle anything fragile. One little boy, who i 3 
just as neglectful or as careful as nature has made 
him, has discovered that the grown-up folks, including 
his old grand ’ma, make mistakes almost as frequently 
as he. And he has found a way how to express his 
scorn for their imaginary precision. Whenever an 
adult in the house breaks or spills something, he sings: 

—I am glad I am not the only one, I am glad I 
am not the only one, I am glad I am not the only 
one • • « 


145 


And so forth for about five minutes. He has a 
special tune for his song. And the grown-ups give 
him an opportunity to repeat his song several times 
daily. 

Up! Up !—The child is six years old. He can jump 
and run and even climb some trees. When he goes 
out with his mother, he is not allowed to make a step 
without holding her hand and, when they reach the 
threshold of any door, be it at the railroad station or 
in a store, that is when the foot must be lifted half 
an inch or an inch, she stops and tells him: 

—Up! Up! 

Something that should never be told any child, not 
even a baby who just begins to walk. 

Not Ordered. —A private school in the West with 
pretentions of modern ideas in education. I ask one 
boy why he does a certain thing. He hesitates for a 
while, then: “Because teacher told me to do it.” I 
turn to the principal who escorts me and shows me 
the institution, and I begin to murmur something about 
“ordering”. But the educator interrupts me: 

—In this place the boys are never ordered to do 
so and so. They are made to want to do it! 

What is the difference? And where is freedom? 

From theory to practice. . . . 

Help Not Wanted. —The child is on his tricycle. 
His father wants to help him. Evidently he wishes 
to play too. The child refuses his help and cries. 


146 


Father says: 11 It will be easier for you.” 

—But I don’t want. 

He prefers to have a harder and not an easier 
work to do. 

The father is cross and ceases to talk to the child. 

Of course, it is a bad child. Why did he not let 
his father rob him of some fun, pleasure, happiness? 

His Majesty, the Doctor!—A difficult confinement. 
One physician is busy with the mother, in the next 
room. Another one has just arrived, and, while he 
puts on his long, white gown before entering the 
adjoining chamber, the little boy and the father watch 
him doing it. The boy interrupts the silence and re¬ 
marks to his father: 

—The other doctor did not remove his coat and 
did not put on a gown. I don’t like him. 

—This is not your business. You cannot sign your 
name yet and you criticize a doctor! 

Who Is Foolish?—The child: ”1 know when it 
rains.” 

Somebody in the house: “When?” 

—When there are clouds, it rains. 

—Sometimes there are clouds without rain. 

—Oh, those are the funny clouds! 

The mother: “Stop that! It’s foolish talk. Are 
you not ashamed of yourself?” 

She does not realize that she is breaking up a con¬ 
versation which may have become an instructive lesson 
for the child. 


147 


A Turkey.—They had a turkey and the child 
admired him incessantly. One day an old aunt asked 
the child in that well-known annoying manner: 

—Do you like me? 

He answered: 

—Yes. 

She insisted, stupidly: 

—Why do you like me ? 

—I like you because you look like a turkey! came 
the answer. 

The child was punished and never understood why. 
He was really sincere in comparing his aunt with the 
wonderful turkey. 

Rocks.—The train passes slowly through a narrow 
and rocky gorge. The little girl is admiring the multi¬ 
colored bare cut in the stone mountain. But the father 
attracts her attention to the other side which is covered 
with some vegetation. 

—Don’t look there! There is nothing to see, 
nothing but rocks. 

In his ignorance he does not realize that rocks 
could be extremely interesting. 

Toys and Garbage.—A mother and a little boy walk 
together in the street. I happen to be behind them. 
The child sees a toy in a garbage can and grabs it 
with avidity. The mother, without a word, snatches 
it from his hands and throws it away. The child looks 
at her for a while, then he runs after the toy and 
picks it up again. He is now at quite a distance from 

m 


his mother. I hasten my step and, as I reach the boy, 
I start a talk with him, at the end of which I explain 
him in a few words what garbage means, how unclean 
it is, how it could spread disease. He lifts his arms 
and hurls the toy as far as he can. 

Knitting. —The mother travels with her three girls. 
She knits and they all must knit. From time to time 
the children, desirous to see the scenery, steal a glance 
through the window of the car. Now we are passing 
a high wooded hill with an isolated house on its sum¬ 
mit. The view is wonderful. The youngest child ex¬ 
claims with rapture: “See that little house up there, 
mothie?” 

The mother, undisturbed, knits and signs her to 
continue her work. 

—Sssst. . . . 

Display.—The three year old child has stopped be¬ 
fore a window where many pretty things are dis¬ 
played. It is great, it is marvelous! His enthusiasm 
is at the highest pitch. His mother becomes impatient, 
drags the crying child away, and says: “What is 
there to be seen? Nothing interesting! You are 
crazy! ’’ 

A little while later the mother stops before another 
window, where a milliner displays her art. Now the 
child becomes impatient, but he is held there by force. 

An Object of Art. —The same child, a little further, 
in the park, finds a piece of carved wood, a remnant 

149 


of some furniture. He thinks it is an admirable object 
and, happy and beaming with joy, brings it to his 
mother, as a present. She flings it away disdainfully. 
The child weeps bitterly. 

What Is a Statue?—The father and his little boy 
are in the open autobus. The child: “What is that, 
daddy?” 

—That is a statue. 

—What is a statue? 

—A statue is a statue! 

Dangerous Curiosity.—The theatre is full of chil¬ 
dren. A show for the little ones is given. Near me is 
a young woman with a little boy. Between the acts 
he assails her with questions. Most of the time she 
does not answer. For the tenth time he asks: “How 
much does it cost down-stairs?” 

At last she bursts out: “He wants to know every¬ 
thing! Soon hell want to know how much the whole 
theatre costs!” 

Hair.—The child asks his father why grown-up 
people have hair on their bodies. The father, very 
embarrassed, says “the boy is spoiled” and “a child 
must not ask such questions” and “hell know it any¬ 
how w r hen hell be older”. But fortunately the uncle, 
an intelligent man, is here. He explains that hair on 
the body grows w hen we begin to become mature, that 
the quadrupeds have it everywhere, that we have lost 
most of it during our evolution from other animal states 
and that we do not know why we have what is left. 


150 


—May be when you will be a big man yon will find 
out why. 

Who Is Stupid? —The child has among his play¬ 
things a chair three inches high. A few adult relatives 
surround him and try to have fun at his expense. 
They ask him idiotic questions and they laugh at their 
own cleverness. One of them orders the child, who is 
three years old, to sit down cn the tiny chair. He 
shrugs his shoulders. 

—Well, why don’t you sit down? 

—’Cause I cannot! 

—Why? 

—’Cause! 

—Because it is too small, you stupid little thing! 

Of course, he knew it as well as they, but it was 
so obvious that it did not need to be told. 

Too Booky. —The mother had been a teacher be¬ 
fore her marriage; probably that is why her children 
know less about nature and are more cranky and un¬ 
happy Ilian others. She seems to possess but one 
method of imparting knowledge—books. And she 
feeds them with books. Therefore, when they come 
to the country, they are little ignoramuses in com¬ 
parison to other children. One asks: “Why do 
potatoes need leaves?” Another one does not like 
the woods, because they are “dirty”, their ground 
being littered with so many dry leaves and not being 
neatly swept like her room. She is wondering: “Why 
ail these leaves and stones?” 


151 


Instructive Dialogues.—A mother of my acquaint¬ 
ance whose conversations with her child I have often 
overheard, always succeeds in elaborating and develop¬ 
ing the child’s questions into a series of dialogues,— 
that is, when he is willing to listen to her. For instance, 
the sinking of a ship was the origin of talks on 
voyages, steamships, the sea, icebergs, life-saving, 
wireless telegraph, fishes, steamship companies, emigra¬ 
tion, differences of passengers (first, second and third 
cabin), etc. Burglaries, assassinations, as read in the 
newspapers, give rise to questions of morality, during 
which, as a rule, the mother listens more than she 
talks. 

Talking of a bridge, she does not fail to emphasize 
the accidents during its construction, the perils to the 
workers. By the way, she always seizes the occasion 
to show how much of our civilization is due to mental 
and manual labor. 

Here is a sample of a full sequence of talks during 
an actual walk in the street, talks suggested by what 
the child saw and by the questions he asked: A man 
with one leg, war, industrial and railroad accidents, 
amputation.—Display of kitchen utensils, their prices, 
the importance of cooking.—Taxidermist, animals, 
birds in cages.—Florist, flowers, hot houses.—Stopping 
for a long time to see pavement repairing, all sorts of 
pavement, horses’ feet, horse-shoes, work of the horse, 
his mildness, other domestic animals.—Abnormal feet 
made of plaster of Paris at a show window. 

As this mother is unable to answer many of the 
child’s questions, after such a walk she has to look 


152 


up several things in the encyclopedia or other hooka 
and show him pictures. 

A Strike Breaker. —In a workingman’s family. A 
little boy, hearing his parents and their friends talk 
about strikes, says: “When I’ll be a man, I’ll be a 
strike breaker.” The adults are infuriated and begin 
to heap insults on him. He runs away into another 
room, crying. One man follows him and asks him 
slowly and patiently what he had meant to say. 

—I’ll give the strikers so much money, that they’ll 
win the strike, so I’ll break it, wouldn’t I? retorts the 
child. 

We should not judge a child superficially, but should 
try to understand him thoroughly. 

Bottles. —Here is an example of the surprising con¬ 
clusions drawm by children: After a conversation on 
glass, windows, the lack of window-panes in the past, 
on light, air and bottles, somebody remarks that of 
late the bottle industry has been completely revolu¬ 
tionized, so much so that where they needed eighty 
workers to manufacture twenty thousand bottles, now 
five suffice. A boy who listened unobserved all the 
time suddenly says: 

—Then seventy five are free and can stay home 
with their boys! 

The Beal Book.—A girl, ten, returns from her vaca¬ 
tion. The father complains that “the whole summer 
she did not open a bool: ” I question her and find out 


153 


that she saw the bluebird, the bees, the chipmunk, the 
cow licking the calf, a wing of a dead dragon-fly, she 
learned to milk the cow, she picked cherries, she helped 
work the garden, she bathed in the creek, she climbed 
the highest hill with other children, she became “all 
black’’ running in the sun, and many other things. 

Of course, she “opened a book”,—the biggest book 
of all! 

The Engine.—Again, misunderstanding the child. 
At the railroad station a little girl is watching with 
amazement the engineer and the trainman manoeuver- 
ing the locomotive. She sees it as a giant work and 
is wandering why they are so quiet. She asks: “Why 
don’t they say something?” But her father mocks at 
her: “Don’t be so foolish! What do you want them 
to say?” 

Dolls.—Children are so accustomed to being called 
“dollies” that they do not pay any longer attention 
to the meaning of this word. They do not know that 
their parents are doing their best to make dolls of 
the little ones. But one child resented the epithet: 

—I am not a doll, I am a big boy! 

Which? —A contradiction discovered by a child. 
He says to his mother: ‘‘Sometimes you say I am big 
and I ought to know better; at other times you say I 
am a little boy and should not mix in when big people 
talk. Which is true?” 

Sincerity. —A socialist writer accompanied by a 
four year old little girl. He calls her* he wants her 


154 


to shake hands with me. She refuses. He threatens 
to hit her if she does not obey instantly. He repeats 
the order, he scolds her. At last he succeeds in bend¬ 
ing the child’s will. But now I decline to hold out 
my hand to her. She goes away. But presently she 
comes back and lingers around. Then, suddenly em¬ 
boldened, she asks: “Do I have to love everybody?” 

—Yes, he answers. 

I ask him: “Do you love everybody?” 

—No, but she does not need to know that; besides, 
I do not want her to show whom she does not like. 

No Keasons Given.—A father and his little boy are 
waiting for the train at a small village station. The 
child stands near the railroad tracks. The father takes 
him by the hand and, without saying a word, drags 
him away forcibly. A few minutes later the child is 
again near the rails. The father pulls him away and 
beats him. But after a while the boy has returned 
there, although his eyes are red with crying. Some¬ 
thing fascinating attracts him now: the huge engine 
with its big light, like some legendary monster, arrives 
and becomes larger and larger in the twilight. He is 
being removed again and kept at the father’s side. 

The father never thought of talking to his boy, of 
telling him that to stay on and near the rails was 
dangerous or of explaining him how an accident might 
happen. 

Smoking.—Somebody, himself a smoker, writes me 
that he caught his ten-year old boy smoking and wants 
my advice. I reply that, as the father is a tobacco 

155 


fiend, he has no right to demand from his boy not to 
smoke, unless the father confesses that he is wrong. 
The father should cease smoking and then he will 
easily find the hygienic arguments against this habit. 
But he should use no force, as it will be futile: the 
boy will smoke secretly and will learn how to conceal 
his cigarettes. 

Birds.—Another letter. Her boy likes birds and 
wants her to buy him a canary. She wishes to know 
my opinion. I would tell the child that if he really 
loves birds, he should not encourage the commerce 
with them; he should go into the parks and woods 
and observe them, studying them from a distance. 

Drawings.—A little girl is very fond of drawing. 
Instead of studying her lessons, she draws. She draws 
everything she sees. She is backward in school, espe¬ 
cially in arithmetic. She shows much talent in her 
illegitimate art. She may become an artist or may 
lose her inclination to art before she is mature; nobody 
knows. But her mother forbids her to draw, because 
* ‘it is useless” and forces her to make her home work. 
The child draws on all scraps of paper, on the wall, 
on the table, as soon as her mother turns her back. 

Pear.—A mother brings me her little boy for a 
consultation. He is ill, and she traces his illness to a 
certain day last week when he played with other boys 
and waded for hours in the water up to the knees; 
after which, being afraid that his mother might punish 
him severely, he did not come home for two days. 

156 


There is no doubt that if the child had no reason 
to fear, if he knew that his mother was good-hearted, 
he would have come home on time. 

Admission.—One woman, having read an article of 
mine on obedience, writes me that I am right: “If 
my boy had obeyed me, he would have never learned 
to swim and I am so glad he knows.” 

Another woman informs me that she is happy that 
her son did not listen to her, that he left her when 
he was young, that he traveled much and wrote a 
beautiful book about his travels. 

Money or Mother? — I am his family physician and 
adviser in many questions and now he comes for an 
advice: He has a store and three small children; he 
would earn more, if his wife, the children's mother, 
would leave the house on the hands of a servant girl 
and would help him in the store. 

My opinion is that it is better for the children if 
he makes less money and if they have their mother 
all the time. 

A Bad Boy.—They all call him a bad boy. He is 
frolicsome and turbulent and plays tricks to everybody. 
He is exceptionally strong for his six years. Being my 
neighbor in the country, he comes often to see me and, 
if he has nothing to do, he disturbs me from my work. 
But when I give him tools and a job, he performs it 
well and leaves me alone. He needs work, he needs 
an outlet for his strength and energy; this is the cause 
of his so-called “badness”. 

157 


Somebody told him: “I should like to send you 
for milk, but you are too wild. You’ll spill the milk.” 

—No, I will not! 

He insists on going and brings the milk unharmed. 

Fride.—A mother tells me how neglectful her eight 
year old boy is. He never dresses himself alone, or 
he begins to dress and forgets to finish. 

Without looking at the child, I say: 

—Poor child! May be it is not his fault. I suppose 
he cannot dress himself, he is probably a cripple. He 
may be half blind, or lame, or something. He is not 
to be blamed. 

The boy becomes angry and says: 

—No, I am not a cripple. I can so dress myself. 

—Then you are too weak. 

—No, I am not! 

A few days later the mother came to announce me 
that the child was all changed and that a great im¬ 
provement has occurred in him. 

Blocks.—His father bought Jimmie a set of build¬ 
ing blocks. But each time the child begins to play, 
his father comes and meddles with them. 

—Oh, daddy! 

—Just a minute; I want to show you something. 

One day Jimmie said to his father: “Here, dad, 
I give you my blocks so that you can play with them, 
and you buy me another set.” 

The Smart Father.—“You see, here in the yard I 
built a little circular railroad—a constant railroad, 


158 


they call it—and the beys never play with it. At the 
beginning they liked it very much. But they got tired 
of it very soon. It cost me a lot of money.” 

I am not astonished and I do not blame the boys. 

A Quarrel. —Usually it is the mothers who consider 
it their duty to hang rings on their little girls’ ears. 
But in this case the mother does not care to have her 
child wear ear-rings. However, the girl wants some 
and the result is a fierce quarrel between mother and 
daughter. They come to me and here is my judgment: 
All that the mother can do is to explain to the girl 
the absurdity of this remnant of savagery. If this does 
not help, the child should ornate herself to her heart’s 
desire. She will understand in time her mother’s argu¬ 
ments. 

Threats. —In the street. A mother and a three-year 
old child. She wants to go to the right, he goes to 
the left. She stands still and calls him. He does not 
stop. She says: “I am going to Santa Claus.” He 
does not turn his head; he walks on. 

“I am going away without you, good bye, good 
jbye!” He walks on. “Bye bye!” He does not care. 

A man passes. “The man is going to whip you.” 
The child glances at the man and continues his way 
undisturbed. 

He is far now. More than half a long block away. 
She calls out loud: “lam going to cry!” But he does 
not seem to be moved and does not interrupt his for¬ 
ward march. All these threats are useless; he has 


159 


already enough experience with his mother to know 
that none of them is true. At any rate it is easy to 
understand that all of them together cannot be true. 

Finally, she runs after him, catches him and takes 
Jiim away by force. 

Complications. —The little girl wants to open the 
window-shade. The people in the house do not let her 
do it. She cries. They say she is bad. Feeling offended, 
she cries more. Her father beats her because she cries. 
She is angry and in her rage she breaks a drinking 
glass. She is whipped again. She becomes wilder. They 
compel her to sit in a corner. She resists. She is 
flogged and kept by force in the corner. She tears 
down her silk ribbon from her head and stamps it 
with her feet. Now the mother slaps the child’s face. 
The latter strikes her back. The mother shouts: “You 
are no more my child!” The father undresses her 
and puts her out into the hall. 

The father declares the child abnormal and says 
he’ll have to take her to the doctor. The girl, hearing 
this and being afraid of the doctor, becomes terribly 
boisterous. The neighbor comes out. An altercation 
between the mother and the neighbor follows. 

The mother, herself now sick and nervous, pushes 
the child into the house, pounding her in the back. The 
child hits her mother again; the latter pommels her 
some more; the tumult increases. The child cries until 
she falls asleep. 

Who is guilty of this drama? Is it the child? 

160 


A Pine Warning. —Mother and boy are out for a 
walk. He climbs on the back of a bench. She gives 
him a thrashing and, while he cries with pain, she says: 
“Don’t do that, you’ll fall and get hurt!” 

Going to Bed. —I am requested to give an advice 
in this matter: The child goes late to bed and in the 
morning it is difficult to wake him up for school; and 
he seems to be very anxious not to miss school. The 
best thing would be not to wake him. Let him be 
late a few times. Besides, let there be no guests in 
the house at night and let nothing happen that could 
excite him. 

Kissing. —The child is punished by his parents for 
his refusal to kiss his grand ’ma. 

Possibly he does not like her. Should he affect a 
sham love? Would hypocrisy satisfy the parents? 

Or perhaps he likes grand’ mother, but does not 
feel a necessity to express his attachment to her by 
kissing. 

At all events it is nobody’s concern but the child’s. 

Stealing. —A little girl of eight stole some money 
from her mother in order to give a “party” to her 
little friends. 

The mother should have known that her child re¬ 
quired society and should have granted her the money 
necessary to arrange the entertainment openly, not 

on the sly. 


161 


A Reason Given. —Mother talks with somebody. The 
child interrupts her all the time and wants to tell her 
something. The mother says: “I must talk to this 
man. I’ll soon be done. If you do not let me, I’ll have 
to stop speaking and listen to you; and the *^an has 
no time to wait.” 

Another time, the child orders the mother in a 
very rough way to give him something. She says: 
“You know, this belongs to me, and if you are un¬ 
kind, I do not feel like giving it to you.” 

Drilling. —A picture lies on my desk. The child 
wants it badly. I offer it to him. His eyes gleam with 
pleasure. But he looks to his mother; she makes him 
a sign, and he says: “No, I don’t want it!” And a 
cloud passes over his features. 

Thanks! —I give a present to a four-year old little 
boy. A nice boat. He is happy, he is excited. His eyes 
tell me how glad he is. It is a great event. But his 
mother bothers him with such a prosaic request: “Say 
thanks!” As if his eyes did not express his gratitude! 

Another child. His father sends him to me on an 
errand. I take the object he brings me and he is so 
content that he exclaims: “Thank you!” and runs 
away. 

Consistency. —Says a little girl: “Teacher always 
claims that it is not nice to point to people, and she 
herself points with her finger to every girl in the class 
room:— ‘You, you, you, are you a baby? You, stand 
up! You, sit down!’” 


162 


The Effect of Words.—In a flat, on the fifth floor. 

A four-year old boy is sitting on my knees and I tell 
him a story. His mother arrives and accuses him of hav¬ 
ing thrown a milk bottle through the window into the 
street. She punished him, but the next day he threw 
her shoes out. I put him down from my lap and be¬ 
come serious. I explain him the possible consequences 
of his act. He argues that he saw nobody pass in the 
street while he threw the bottle out, and as to the 
shoes, they are not lost, as his father found them. I 
insist on the possibility of terrible outcomes and illus¬ 
trate my contention with actual facts. He listens 
attentively. I say: “Look here. I am a doctor and I 
always try to make the people as healthy as I can, 
while you are doing things that could hurt them. So, 
you see, we cannot be friends/ ’ 

He is deeply stirred, he reflects for a minute, his 
lips begin to move as if to cry, and he stammers: 
“But—but—but I’ll not do it any more!” 

In A House of Lies.—The father, a second-hand 
lawyer, always claims to have wonderful successes 
everywhere, but they are all imaginary. He cheats 
others and cheats himself. He considers himself one 
of the greatest men. He thinks nobody tells the truth, 
anyway. The mother believes or pretends to believe 
that she has marvelous talents, that she is being praised 
by everybody and that she meets the most distinguished 
and the richest people in t >wn. 

All the children are liars. The lie is usually toler* 
168 


a ted, but from time to time & child is punished tot 
lying. 

One daughter is married and her home is already 
a house of lies. 

The Cup.—The child broke a beautiful Japanese 
cup. Nobody upbraided him for that. But he began 
to cry and he felt so unhappy that the father had to 
kiss and console him. Certainly there was no need 
of a punishment. 

And why did he break it? Because he wanted to 
wash it, and, instead of leaving it on the table while 
he went to get the basin, he took the cup with him. 
It did not occur to him that he needed both hands to 
carry the basin. 

There is no other way to learn these things than 
by doing them and making mistakes. 

The Promise.—The little boy quarrelled with his 
mother and hit her, although his parents had never 
stricken him. His father and mother did not talk to 
him that evening and he went to bed without their 
customary kiss. He said he was sorry to have offended 
them. 

But the next day he forgot all about it and was 
bad again. He gave his mother a blow and this time 
Bhe returned the compliment. He cried and was very 
Bad and regretful. 

Nevertheless, when his mother wanted to make him 
promise that hell never beat her again, he 6aid f with 


164 


that wonderful childish logic and honesty, that he 
could not tell what he was going to do in the future. 

His father tried to explain him what a promise 
meant, but to no avail. Then his father asked him 
whether he will throw himself into the sea to be 
drowned or into the fire to be burned alive. The child 
said: “No!”— 1 '‘How then,” asked the father, “do 
you know that you will not do it, although it is in the 
future?”—And so, gradually, the child understood 
what to promise something meant. But even then he 
did not promise not to beat his mother; he said he 
wished never to do it again. And he never did it after¬ 
wards. 

Worry.—A five-year old boy used to go to a kinder¬ 
garten about twenty minutes distance from his house 
and had to cross several very busy streets with many 
fast vehicles. His mother always accompanied him 
there and back. 

Once at noon time he ran out of school as quickly 
as he could so that he would not be seen and would 
go home all by himself. His mother saw him and 
followed him. He was pretty with his blond hair in 
the wind, swift as a deer. And he was conscious 
of his bravery. 

For several days he went presumably alone to 
school, until he noticed his mother walking after him 
and watching him. Then he cried and said that he 
was able to go to school unaccompanied. 

No argument helped, least of all the possibility of 

163 


liis getting run over. He was a big boy, he knew how 
to cross the streets, he was careful, and so on. 

But when his mother told him that she worried 
and suffered at the thought that a misfortune might 
happen, that even if he was not afraid, she was, he said: 
“All right, you will come with me, because I don’t 
'want you to worry.” 

However, a short time later she ceased to escort him 
and he went to school alone. 

Enoch.—A father believed his little girl to be feeble¬ 
minded because she did not want to pronounce the 
words “enough” and “laugh” in the usual fashion, 
but “enoch”, “lauch”. She had a theory about it: 
she thought that hers was the correct way and that 
the people were all wrong. 

I found the child not only perfectly normal, but 
even superior in intelligence to the average child. 

Responsibility.—Charlie was the strongest disturb¬ 
ing factor in a certain group of children. To obtain 
order it was necessary to put him as an overseer over 
the others; then he was perfectly quiet and peaceful. 

The Incubator.—A little girl of four once asked 
her parents where the babies came from. They did 
not know what to answer and as the child insisted, 
the father took her to Coney Island (near New York) 
and showed her the incubator with the babies, saying 
that they were bought there. The child believed it 
and was satisfied. 


160 


But her married aunt, who used to come often to 
the house, always complained that she could not be¬ 
come a mother and envied those who had children. 

One day the little girl left her toys and came to 
her father in a great hurry. 

—Why does not auntie buy a baby from the in¬ 
cubator? You said she had plenty of money. 

Piggie. —Whenever an adult said to Tommie: 4 ‘You, 
pig!” he answered: “Gee, I would like to be a pig.” 
And he was sincere. It is not an insult to a child to 
be compared with animals, because he likes them. By 
the way, nothing is an insult if we do not regard it 
as such. 

The Thief. —Billie, three, walks with his mother 
in the street. At the grocer’s he goes straight to the 
fruit counter and helps himself to an apple. There¬ 
upon, a shower of imprecations. His mother, in de¬ 
spair, thinks he has “bad instincts” and “some day 
he will be a thief”. 

She does not realize that he is more honest than 
all of us, just because he has not yet discovered the 
notio? of private property and because “stealing” 
does not figure yet in his vocabulary. 

Destruction.—She is already a young lady and is 
still entirely under her mother’s influence. Her own 
will has always been entirely submerged and now it 
is altogether destroyed. Her mother holds her with 
iron clutches, in a tight grip.—of course, in a “modern” 

167 


way, always calling her “darling**, never indicting 
any punishment on her, a polite tyranny, as it were. 
She never made a move without her mother or her 
mother’s consent. Her mother’s mind is her opinion 
in everything. 

And if you know her, you will not be astonished 
to hear her say, at her age: “Mother says I am cold 
without my sweater.’* 

Filial Love.—A man of thirty confesses that he 
hates his father and mother and is glad not to live 
in the same town with them. 

—Why? 

—Their whole conduct was always awfully mean. I 
see it now, because I know what they have made of 
me and how they could have treated me. 

—But what was their worst fault according to your 
opinion ? 

—The worst? The worst? ... I hate them 
mainly because they whipped me so much. 

The Truant.—He is seven. One day he says he 
will not go to school and stays home. Notwithstand¬ 
ing his parents’ insistence, he would not disclose the 
reason. The next day his mother chases him out; 
she stands at the house door with a rod and watches 
him attentively. But, arrived near the school entrance, 
he manages to slip away. In the afternoon he returns 
home and admits that he has not been in school and 
that he does not intend to go there any longer. The 
next morning, when his parents attempt to carry him 

168 


to school by force, he fights them with all his might. 
At last, they have to give it up. A few days later a 
truant officer comes to inquire about him; this time 
he is brought to school in spite of his resistance. 

The principal, an elderly woman, lectures the parents, 
that is, insults them profusely, hands the mother a 
ruler and bids her to strike the boy. As the mother 
does it too soft-heartedly, the principal takes the ruler 
and shows her how it should be done. Still, after all 
this torture and humiliation, the child declares he 
will not go to school. If he is forced to stay there 
to-day, he says, he will not return to-morrow. 

Then the principal decides that the boy is “not 
in his wits and should be examined by a doctor.’* 

The mother comes with him to me for a consulta¬ 
tion and tells me the story, which is corroborated by 
the boy and later by the father and by the principal 
herself, to whom I went for information. 

I examine the child and find him perfectly normal 
in every respect. Surmising that he has a grudge 
against his mother and that he may not speak frankly 
in her presence, I send her out of the consulting room 
and try to gain the boy’s confidence. With great 
difficulty I succeed and he tells me the reason why 
he would not go to school: A few days ago he came 
to school with a new suit of clothes and another boy 
threw some water over it. His protests to the teacher, 
instead of bringing him justice, resulted in abuses 
and punishment. 

—Teacher was not fair, she was mean. . . 

And his tears choke him. 


169 


He could not bear the affront. He is a bit more 
sensitive than the average child, but he was not wrong. 

At last, he suggests a compromise: He will go to 
school if he is transferred to another school. 

Was the child guilty in this case? 

His Opinions.—Says a boy of seventeen, an appren¬ 
tice tool-maker: ‘‘My father is always on the side of 
the boss. He says I am right, but I must not tell my 
opinion. Why not? It was the same thing when I 
was in school. He used to tell me that I must never 
oppose the teacher, but that I’ll be free to say what 
I want when I’ll have finished school. And now I 
must not open my mouth. 

“An Awful Boy“. —He is sixteen. All those who 
know him think he is “awful”. He has all the defects 
in the world and he will certainly become a criminal. 
Mothers warn their children not to have any dealings 
with him. 

I have a talk with him. We become more and more 
acquainted. His physique is attractive. His language 
is coarse and it is true that he did not care to finish 
his primary school, but he goes to work assiduously. 
Moreover, as from the country place where he lives 
with his parents there is no later suitable train that 
should bring him in time to the city, to the shipyard 
where he is working, he must get up at half past four 
in the morning, which he does. His work is dangerous. 

My investigations show me that at home he is 
always cheerful and obliging. He sweeps the floor, 

* 170 


he carries his sister's baby in his arms. He regularly 
brings his weekly wages to his mother, except for 
his smoking money. 

Upon further inquiry I learn that these are not 
his parents, that he is their adopted son and that 
they have always persecuted him and burdened him 
with the hardest labor in the house, to which, by the 
way, he never objected. They have created around 
him a tradition of badness which has taken root among 
all the relatives and neighbors. They have habituated 
him so much with all sorts of indignities, they have 
offended his self-respect so often, that he no longer 
resents being called “bad boy” and other names with 
opprobrious meanings. 

So far h.e is not bad at all, but if he does become a 
“bad man” as they assure me he will, this will be 
due to those who more or less have had his fate in 
their hands. 

Experience. —A boy of fifteen. He longs to become 
a farmer, but his mother is strongly opposed to his 
project. She claims to have experience and to know 
how difficult the farmer’s life is and how “dirty” 
his work. 

One morning the boy turns his back to the malo¬ 
dorous tenement house in which he lives and to the 
congested district where he has been brought up and 
leaves furtively for the country. For weeks the parents 
are in great agony; they do not know where the boy 
is. At last a letter arrives. He describes how happy 

171 


he is, how beautiful the place is, how he likes the 
work even though it is very hard. 

Immediately his mother is off. She takes the train 
and within a few hours she is at the farm. She finds 
him in overalls, carrying a milk pail. With tears and 
threats she succeeds in taking him home. 

At home she describes to the family the barn near 
which she saw him and adds some exaggerations of 
her own. 

—But, mother, I don’t work in the bam only. The 
other day I helped ploughing too. 

No argument is powerful enough to change her 
mind. 

—Well, ma, what do you want me to become? 

—I want you to have a nice, respectable profession. 

—For instance, what? 

—For instance, a druggist. 

Poor, blind woman! What a distorted viewpoint! 
She is not aware of the fact that any barn is prefer¬ 
able to a drug store and to its so-called laboratory,— 
and this from the standpoint both of physical and 
moral cleanliness. 

She insists and, of course, uses her irresistible 
weapon, her tears, whose magic effect she knows very 
well. He becomes an apprentice in a drug store and 
one of his duties is to sweep the floor several times 
daily. Later he might go to the college of pharmacy. 

However, he does not like his new occupation, and 
after a short stay, he quits. 

And now, for several years, he passes from one 

172 


trade to another, still hoping and yearning to be¬ 
come a farmer and to live in the country. He is un¬ 
happy. In the end, disgusted, he enters the army, 
which is for his mother a worse blow than if he had 
remained at the farm. 


173 








FOURTH PART 

Sex and the Child 










Sex Morality 


Those who are convinced of the principles of 
rational education will have no difficulty in finding 
their way to solve the problem of the sexual bringing- 
up of the child. It is much easier than it is generally 
conceded. The perplexities about which many of the 
parents and educators complain in this matter are due 
to their own fault, to the obstacles and obstructions 
with which they themselves beset their task. 

The majority of the parents, alas, see no problem 
at all; they ignore its existence and they do not even 
guess that there is a connection between sex and 
childhood; but then, they are in complete darkness 
concerning the particular psychology of children al¬ 
together. Their opinion is that a child should know 
nothing about sex, and they believe that if he does 
find out something, it is always through outside in¬ 
fluences which cannot be but obnoxious and which 
make him licentious, dissolute, immoral. They do not 
dream that the sex function, although less pronounced 
than in the adult, is alive in the child and that they 
themselves are frequently the unwilling and more or 


less innocent instruments which break down his so- 
called morals. They would be unable to explain how 
they imagine the final passage from child to man and 
woman, they would be at a loss to tell us when, at what 
age, sex ceases to be immoral, because they think it is 
always so. 

Probably we would have nothing to say in sex 
matters and none would suffer from the lack of sex 
education if we had no standard of sex morality at 
all and if sexual relations were not so intimately asso¬ 
ciated with our social and economic conditions. 

Sex a-morality would be by far better than our 
present sex morality. 

It is mainly due to the latter that we lose our 
simplicity in sex life and that we entangle and com¬ 
plicate everything that has to do with it. We usually 
are so brought up that both sexes are for a long time 
very distant from each other, so that a legitimate 
but exaggerated and unsound curiosity is formed on 
both sides. This curiosity becomes transformed into 
a constant, abnormal irritation, which, at the slightest 
occasion, at the least contact, flares up into a frightful 
fire. 

Sex is officially non-existent in the education of 
most children. Nor are there such things as sex organs; 
they do not figure in school books, at any rate, not in 
the elementary books on physiology. 


178 


Children’s Questions 

How do most people learn, after all, what they 
do know about sex life? Does nature teach us, when 
the time comes, when we are ripe to receive the proper 
knowledge? No, we have a desire to have sexual in¬ 
tercourse much earlier, and this is due to the unnatural 
circumstances in which we live. 

The child’s questions begin very early and they 
are never a sign of depravation, as some foolishly be¬ 
lieve. The brighter the child, the sooner will he begin 
to ask them; the more innocent and honest he is, the 
franker, the more straightforward his questions and 
the more unembarrassed his manner when asking them. 
We ought to understand that the child does not ask 
anything for the purpose of bringing us into confusion, 
that his questions are a result of deep thinking, which 
has arisen in him because it had to arise. He asks a ques¬ 
tion just as he asks for bread. He is hungry for the 
answer and he is entitled to it. He is also ripe to 
get it, as his mind was sufficiently ripe to give birth 
to the question. 

Children are usually interested to know how we 
179 


come into the world; but they are mostly dismissed 
with a lie, or they are punished for asking, or the 
answer is postponed—for the time “when they’ll be 
big”. They are told that children are brought by 
storks. In France they are found in cabbage heads 
or—horror!—they come out from their mother’s fore¬ 
head. Some people are so mean and prosaic as to have 
the doctors and midwives bring them in their bags. 

Even the most stupid child is able to observe that 
some change has occurred in the mother toward the 
end of her pregnancy. One night, without any explana¬ 
tion, the child is pitilessly separated from her. He is 
locked into his room. Something unusual happens. 
Doors are opened and closed. There is an air of 
mystery about the house. He hears his mother’s voice, 
—yes, it is her voice—in the adjoining room. She is 
crying very loud. Father orders him to sleep, but he 
cannot. His eyes are for a long time wide open in 
the dark. At last he closes them and falls asleep, 
sobbing heavily. The next morning he is taken into 
mother’s room. She is ill in bed, but nobody tells him 
why. He is introduced to a tiny, red-faced, wriggling 
creature that looks like a miniature of a human being, 
but is much uglier. He is told that this is his little 
sister or brother. Where did it come from? How did 
they get it? What connection is there between 
mother’s illness and this baby? What connection be¬ 
tween her screams of last night and the baby? Can 
anyone blame the child for asking himself, for asking 
us, if he is allowed, all these questions, perhaps not 
so concretely formulated? Would he not be an idiot 


180 


if lie should fail to ask about the origin of this miracle! 

And the answers, instead of being worthy of the 
questions, are low, immoral, offending the child’s mind, 
degrading his intelligence, infamous. 

If children are being brought by the doctor or the 
midwife, what right have the parents to the love of 
their offspring? 

But even if the child does believe the fables and 
lies of the adults, it is generally not for a long time. 
Fortunately so, as otherwise it would prove that he is 
the hopeless imbecile which his parents consciously or 
unconsciously intend to make of him. A postponement 
of the answer for a later period of his life results only 
in making his curiosity keener. 

He looks for other sources of information, which 
are usually objectionable from every standpoint. Thus 
by trying to make him moral we succeed in demoralis¬ 
ing him completely. 

Every smile, every handshake, every whisper of the 
grown-up folks, who do not realize how attentive the 
child is in this respect, is being stored in his mind 
and in time interpreted in one way or another. Every 
imprudent word serves him in his silent search for 
the truth. 

There is one thing that he understands early, in 
his dim, inarticulate way: that there is something which 
people hide, about which they do not allow him to 
ask questions and about which they seem to be 
ashamed or afraid, just as he is ashamed or afraid 
when he commits some of his little transgressions, as 
wetting his bed or breaking a glass. Slowly, gradually, 

181 


a new thought rises up in his mind and becomes clearer 
and clearer, more and more certain: that all those 
phrases which he cannot comprehend, all those embraces 
in which he surprises men and women—never people of 
the same sex—and from which they unwind them¬ 
selves quickly with some inappropriate excuse, all 
those allusions which make the adults laugh so heartily, 
are somehow associated with the idea of guilt, of sin¬ 
fulness, and that simultaneously they have something 
to do with the appearance of children into the world. 

In time he becomes convinced that in sex matters 
we have to be on our guard, to shun the truth, to £eel 
shame, as they probably contain something unclean, 
shameful, dishonorable, immoral and ugly. When he 
becomes older and adults are a little more free in his 
presence, he never hears them speak of those secret 
functions otherwise than in a mocking, railing, inso¬ 
lent manner and only in combination with the notion 
of depravity. So the adults, while thinking that they 
protect the child from learning what he craves to 
learn, are teaching him indirectly all about it, but in 
& wrong way, as if in a curved mirror, and the result 
is immorality and ugliness in something that is in 
reality beautiful and moral. 

Besides, when the child begins to feel some un¬ 
certain, indistinct, vague necessities, he does not come 
to his parents for an explanation, because he knows 
already that they will not answer him, that they are 
not his friends, but that they are high authorities and 
masters, who will not deign to condescend and to listen 
to his private troubles. The pubescent child who has 

1$2 


learned something, albeit in so twisted a manner, about 
sex, from open conversations with his little friends, 
will rather come to the latter with his confessions con¬ 
cerning his pains or feelings or new phenomena about 
his sexual sphere. And the friends will reply what 
they know in their ignorance and an exchange and 
comparison of experiences and impressions will take 
place. What do the parents know about the clan¬ 
destine life of their children f 


183 


The Girl’s Plight 

The young girl who later must play such an im¬ 
portant part in life, who is to be the mother of the 
next generation, in whose bosom lies the future, is 
supposed to be kept away from sexual knowledge. 
Even if she does know all about it, it is her duty to 
be modest, reserved, to make believe that she kno\?8 
nothing. And there is no doubt that besides the 
social and economic causes of prostitution and white 
slavery, one of its main sources is to be sought in this 
ignorance or half-ignorance of the girls about sex 
matters and about the dangers lurking for them in 
all corners. A large part of the prostitutes owe their 
cad life to this neglect of the education of the girl. 
And to the same lack of information and preparation 
as to what awaits the girl in her adult life, are due a 
good deal of the sufferings, miseries and distresses of 
women in their married life. One of the reasons why 
bo many women are frigid, bad wives or nervously 
ill in married life, and so make themselves and their 
husbands miserable, is the fact that as girls they have 
been taught to be too reserved with the male sex. 


184 


By the way, in boys who hare been restrained too 
much and who have seen girls from a distance only, 
the effect is sometimes to make them, either half im¬ 
potent, less virile as men, or on the contrary too ex¬ 
acting from their wives, because they are incapable of 
self-inhibition. 

When the girl wears yet her short skirt and has 
still in mind her childish plays, between eleven and 
fifteen years, there occurs in her a change which is 
rarely recognized by the inexperienced. It is a trans¬ 
formation of her character, of her intellect, of her way 
of seeing things and looking at them, of her power of 
comprehension, of her relation to the surrounding 
world and to herself. She does not understand herself 
and she does not know how to understand her close 
society. A vague dreaming, a longing to something 
unknown to her begins to reveal itself to her soul. 
This is the moral part of the unfolding of the human 
flower. Usually this moral metamorphosis in the 
wonderful and exquisitely delicate girlish blossom 
does not have the bad consequences that it cGuld have 
in the coarse atmosphere in which it is enclosed, be¬ 
cause the playful, naive nature of the child which has 
not yet vanished, weakens and corrects the new im¬ 
pulse and anxiety of the oncoming woman-feelings and 
mother-feelings. True, this development has not been 
sudden; true, it commenced in the cradle and it found 
its expression in one way or another during the first 
ten or twelve years of the child’s life, when it was 
mingled with all her plays. It is true that the tender 
and careful motherhood bestowed upon the doll has 


185 


been the beginning of her subsequent, natural, rich, 
real motherhood. But at present, in the years of 
expansion, in the period of her magnificent sexual 
awakening, the spiritual changes are quicker than ever 
before, although not more visible, not more apparent, 
although they are even more confusing, more intricate, 
more obscure, more unintelligible, more enigmatic than 
before. 

And now, when the girl stands on the threshold of 
her womanhood, all sorts of perils are besieging her 
in our base, sordid, corrupt, civilized world, if she is 
not being guided with great prudence, tenderness, tact 
and love over and through the unsafe path. The dan¬ 
gers are infinitely smaller, the problems much easier, 
if the educators have listened to the little girl from 
the earliest days of her life, from the time when sex 
questions first dawned upon her mind and if these 
have been answered frankly and truthfully. 

But if the moral, mental and spiritual part of the 
female development is frequently unknown or puzzling 
to the child and to the parents, the physical transfor¬ 
mations are so visible, that they cannot pass unob¬ 
served. Of course, with the rare parents who under¬ 
stand the rational bringing-up of the child, this bodily 
change in the girl is not unexpected by her. They 
have prepared her gradually to her future great role 
and she is fully aware of her duties. Until the above 
described critical period, she has learned of all the 
phenomena that must show themselves in her body. 
However, such a good education is seldom met with 
and therefore the significance of the first hair on the 


186 


mom veneris, the marvelous budding of the young and 
proud breasts, as well as the mystery of the menstrua¬ 
tion are mostly foreign to the child, or their meaning 
has been warped and soiled through the false and 
unclean theories gleaned from ignorant playmates and 
from the surrounding society plunged in immorality. 

If not too late, it is of great importance that a free 
and open explanation should be given at least now. 
And for that purpose the best person is the mother or 
another enlightened, wise woman. Of course, there 
where no mother, no father, no friend, no teacher has 
done anything to bring light into the girl’s mind, 
there where the sexual education has been neglected, 
—an honest, magnanimous, intelligent physician, armed 
with much tact, may be the teacher. Possibly it would 
be a good thing that such a custom should be intro¬ 
duced for the benefit of both boys and girls. 

As this is rarely done, we should not be astonished 
or feel revolted when we learn that a large percentage 
of young girls, sometimes mere children, have lost 
their virginity during school years or soon after. 

What I said above about the partial relation of the 
ignorance of girls to white slavery as cause and 
effect could be proved by many circumstances and ex¬ 
amples and by confessions of many a prostitute. A 
few years ago an investigation among some of the 
traders caught red handed in New York brought some 
extremely interesting facts which ought to serve as 
warnings to all parents. The little that could be 
squeezed out from them, the scant information that 
was gained from their admissions, was exceedingly 

m 


revolting and appalling, although not unknown to 
those of us who deal with social and sanitary facts. 
In ten years one of the criminals seduced and misled 
not less than three thousand girls, mostly elementary 
and secondary school girls, and sold them to brothel 
houses. 

Can you imagine what this means? Your child, 
a girl of thirteen or fourteen, who happens to be well 
developed physically, with somewhat larger breasts 
than it is usual, with round outlines, with long hair 
braids, with an attractive, fresh, red and white face, 
her mind full of vague, half slumbering dreams and 
desires, is off in the morning to school. She carries 
her books. Her legs are free up to the knees, unencum¬ 
bered by skirts. She walks, and her graceful lips sketch 
a smile and speak to a classmate about a thousand 
innocent absurdities of their school life or perhaps 
about the serious questions and secrets of their age. 
She walks, and sometimes jumps up a little, forgetting 
that since some time her mother is classifying her 
among the big girls. 

You know she is at school. . . . But it is late and 
the child did not return yet! You leave your work 
and go to look for her. It is in vain. Where is she? 
Where can she be? She has disappeared. And now 
you recall that during the last weeks she often used 
to go out in the evening and come home late. Her 
conduct had become queer. She was more nervous, 
more excited, more distracted than ever. You had 
had a few quarrels with her on that account; but 
yrkat was going on in her soul you did not guess. 

188 


From school to brothel, that was her way. And that 
way passed through motion picture theatres, dance 
halls, gay restaurants, automobile trips, candies, pres¬ 
ents, fine smiles and nice words, all coming from a 
correctly and stylishly dressed young man, whose 
behavior was evidently as sweet as honey. The poor 
young girl mistook this for love, for true love out of 
the novels and followed the hero with the oiled, shiny, 
well combed hair, with the white, clean and manicured 
hands, whose touch awakened in her body some new 
pleasure and opened a spring of untapped and un¬ 
known heavenly sentiments. She felt a necessity to 
have adventures which should free her from her every¬ 
day gray, monotonous life, just as the boy wants to 
go and fight the Indians. 

So she becomes a prostitute. She cannot return 
home, she has burned all the bridges that connected 
her with her former society. Her body has been hurled 
into the Minotaur’s mouth, into the entrails of the 
grotesque giant who swallows children and who to-day 
is no other than human civilized society. 

Undoubtedly the parents have a large share of the 
guilt involved in this crime, in the loss of their child. 
What have they done in order to prevent it and to save 
her? Have they prepared her? Have they told her 
about sex life and about the ambushes strewn on her 
way? Did they tell her anything about sexual diseases, 
prostitution and white slavery? Were they her friends 
and did they deserve her trust? Did they do every¬ 
thing to make her home agreeable? Did they under¬ 
stand how to watch her and at the same time to leave 

189 


her free! Did they not, all through her child age, 
forbid her all they should have accorded her, and 
allowed her all they should have prohibited her ? Did 
they ever explain her why they did not permit her 
something? Did they bring her up rationally? 

If not, what right have they to complain? 


The Boy’s Plight 


The boy is perhaps in greater need of a teacher 
and leader in sexual life than the girl, because he is 
more exposed to excitements and is, by reason of his 
sex, less hampered than she. Freedom as such, the 
largest measure of freedom would not hurt him. But 
harmful and dangerous for him is his freedom com¬ 
bined with his ignorance. He too should get a natural 
sex education, increasing by degrees and with his grow¬ 
ing years, a preparation which should start at the time 
when his mind begins to develop, so that there would 
be no difficulties when his maturity begins. As it is, 
such a bringing-up being rather the exception, a course 
—as informal as possible—of serious lessons would un¬ 
doubtedly have a salutary effect. 

The sexual development in the boy is more com¬ 
plicated in its external symptoms than in the girl. 
The erections, the slight overflowing discharges of the 
superfluous but natural gland secretions due to con¬ 
scious or unconscious irritations, and later the pollu¬ 
tions of real seminal fluid and the sexual dreams,— 
all these inevitable incidents scare the young boy and 


191 


suggest to him the thought that he is ill. The indis¬ 
tinct, mysterious craving after the unknown, the in¬ 
voluntary blushing at the contact of a girl, who, al¬ 
though chronologically of the same age as he, is sex¬ 
ually older and more experienced; his awkward and 
clumsy behavior in the presence of the female sex,— 
all this disturbs and amazes the boy. 

The adolescent who begins to feel himself unhappy 
through the need of love is like the baby who, surprised 
at an unexpected and involuntary sneeze, looks around 
and tries to discover who had done something to him. 
He does not understand the cause of his trouble. 

The quieter, more thoughtful and more poetically 
inclined boys are being penetrated and conquered in 
this period by a boundless yearning, by a brooding 
sadness, by a pessimism without equal, sometimes by 
a love which embraces the entire humanity, the whole 
world, all nature. 

Many or most of the boys are frequently so excite- 
able that to the experienced observer they seem to be 
loaded with powder ready to explode at any moment 
through a spark of fire. And in a certain sense this 
is really the case. They believe to be in love with 
every girl who excites them and they feel themselves 
extremely unhappy if they cannot attain their aim, to 
possess her. Here and there one falls in love with 
some heroine of a novel or of a play. Others act in a 
seemingly aimless manner. 

In all these difficulties the boy finds himself mostly 
alone, a solitary sufferer, helpless, without an older 
and more intelligent friend, a real friend, to whom he 


192 


should be able to confide and who should be his illumin¬ 
ating star, his shining beacon. Around him he sees 
only: his unfriendly parents of whom he has been 
accustomed, through his upbringing, to be afraid or 
ashamed; the older, cynical and often shameless com¬ 
rades, who excite him still more and drive him to the 
prostitute; the advertisements of the quack doctors 
who scare him and throw him into despair; and a world 
of women, women everywhere, who inflame him con¬ 
stantly and wait, many with their gonorrhoea and 
syphilis, for his young, trembling, innocent unde¬ 
veloped body. And among them winks, nods, beckons, 
calls the professional prostitute! 

He is seventeen years old,—alas, sometimes sixteen 
or even younger! His playmates talk only of women. 
They are all excited. Their fancy, being constantly 
irritated, becomes easily aflame, and brings before them 
those pictures which they wish to see. Their jokes are 
full of the female body. Most of them have “experi¬ 
ence”. They are proud to have had their share of 
venereal diseases and they deride the “baby”, the 
only boy among them who knows yet very little about 
these matters. There are a few others who are just 
as much novices as he is, but they are reluctant to 
avow it and they join in the chorus of ridicule aimed 
at the only confessedly inexperienced. 

He reads the lying booklets and newspaper adver¬ 
tisements, which are being spread profusely in order 
to advertise some criminal swindlers who unfortunately 
as a rule practise lawfully and are licensed physicians. 
A large part of the press help them and are their part- 

193 


ners by being well paid for their insertions. The 
medical profession never lights them seriously, prob¬ 
ably because it feels what sinister light a true investi¬ 
gation of their affairs would reflect upon it; the leaders 
of the profession are aware of the fact that even 
many so-called decent physicians, who do not adver¬ 
tise in the papers, are in this respect almost as rapa¬ 
cious as the others. Here and there an arrest has been 
made, but nothing radical has ever been done and the 
trade of these sharks continues to be thriving and 
prosperous. The fakers 1 ‘who specialize in venereal 
troubles” do all in their power to terrorize and lure 
boys and men to their offices, where, with assistants, 
with “electric machines”, with bottles of water vari¬ 
ously colored, they fleece their clients and, what is 
worse, put into their minds the terrible germ of the 
belief that whatever they suffer from is a dangerous 
disease, a belief of which few are able to get rid 
to the end of their lives. 

He is lured into so-called “anatomical” exhibitions 
belonging to quacks, where the worst and most excep¬ 
tional venereal conditions are illustrated in colored 
pictures and in wax reliefs, and where he is made to 
believe that his normal symptoms of natural develop¬ 
ment are signs of frightful diseases. 

In the quack “literature” the boy finds his few 
innocent, almost childish secrets, his normal, physio¬ 
logical feelings around the genitals, lavishly described 
and to every one of his “symptoms” great and exag¬ 
gerated importance is given. The booklets are written 
by a clever and shrewd scribe in the service of the 


194 


charlatan. In them the boy finds arguments that per¬ 
suade him that he is a sinful creature with grave moral 
and physical offenses against his conscience. The very 
common acne, backache, headache, etc., are mentioned 
there as sure signs of a disease whose cause is pollu¬ 
tion or masturbation and whose prognosis is in¬ 
sanity ; the remedy, of course, is a treatment by Doctor 
So-And-So whose address is on every paragraph of the 
booklet. The boy recognizes himself in its pages and 
is terribly frightened, as these are words written by 
b doctor, and surely a doctor knows! 

On the other hand all the boys assure him that 
the only way to get cured of all his ailments ‘‘is to 
go to see a woman”. Besides, they say, he cannot 
afford to be a baby; “he must become a man”. 

All these and other circumstances drive the young 
boy, sometimes yet a child, into the arms of some 
woman, but mostly into the hell of prostitution, into 
the public cloacal sewer, which poisons and infects the 
lives of thousands of men, which pollutes their minds 
and their bodies. 

Physicians treat daily hundreds of cases of gonor¬ 
rhoea in children of fifteen, sixteen and seventeen and 
hear their confessions, but nobody can treat the mental 
sore left in the boy who loses his virginity in the 
embrace of a prostitute. 

All this may be unpleasant reading, but it is essen¬ 
tial that all the facts be known to parents, to educators, 
to the public, so that everyone who feels a responsibil¬ 
ity, should react. I cannot and will not spare them 
some of the details. It is important that they feel at 

195 


least a part of the pains which thinking physicians 
have felt since so long. Cleaning dirt is a clean work. 

The boy goes. . . No real desire, no necessity 
leads him there. He thinks it his duty to go. He is 
bewildered. His head burns, his heart palpitates, he 
shivers, he has lost all control of himself, he does not 
know what he is doing. The experienced and skilled 
prostitute looks at him scornfully. He does not hear 
her words, he does not understand clearly what he has 
to do. He blushes, he is ashamed and embarrassed. His 
throat is dry and his mouth bitter. She helps him. 
He feels a horrible repugnance and a desire to vomit. 
He would like to cry, to cry in his mother’s lap. But 
—“he must be a man”. And he sees two flabby, hang¬ 
ing breasts, a wrinkled stomach, red and blue ribbons, 
a mouth full of yellow, cynically laughing, teeth, and 
some more wrinkles, wrinkles everywhere. He feels 
the odor of a nauseous perfume. The whole picture, 
all the colors become mixed together with lightning 
swiftness, and suddenly, for one brief moment, appears 
another image: the red and fresh cheeks of the young 
girl who lives next door to his house. He passes his 
hand over his forehead and wipes away the terrible 
contrast. He perspires. 

The prostitute says something about “green”, “in¬ 
experienced”, and consoles him. He is entirely unable. 

He feels tired, weak, broken. He lies stupidly on 
the bed, like a felled beast. And when at last he must 
pay, his hands tremble and everything around him 
dances and flickers. 

He leaves the place with a feeling of the deepest 
196 


disgust. He flees, and runs along the streets, not 
knowing where, like a drunkard. 

He promises himself never to go again. But he does 
not keep his promise. 

This was the passage, the transition to a life full 
of filth. 


197 


Masturbation 


Sexual life begins as soon as we are born. It re¬ 
mains in the subconscience until it is provoked, until 
it is called out into clear conscience by external influ¬ 
ences, during childhood, sometimes at a very early 
age. 

Neglect to clean sufficiently the genital region, 
touching too frequently and unnecessarily the child’s 
body, superfluous caressing, fondling, stroking, kissing 
the child, letting the child share the parent’s or other 
adult’s bed at night, putting several children to sleep 
in one bed, lack of supervision of the child’s play and 
playmates,—all these and other mistakes are the causes 
of a too early sexual development and of unhealthful 
sexual habits. 

During childhood, during the important years of 
the building up of the character, it is best for the 
parents not to consider anybody as reliable, not to 
trust the child to anybody, without oversight. 
Governesses, the very persons who are supposed to 
take care of and educate the child, are often the first 
ones who directly and indirectly acquaint him with 

198 


sexual practices which he would otherwise, if ever, 
have acquired but much later. We should not rely 
on the child’s brothers and sisters during their puberty 
or even after maturity. The same may be said about 
uncles and aunts; also about servants. 

Masturbation is one of the first sexual habits ac¬ 
quired by the child. It is a sexual satisfaction provoked 
by handling the genitals. Sometimes it begins in baby¬ 
hood, naturally in a very incomplete form, for instance 
through a friction of the legs against each other. It 
is quite common among school children, the school 
having a very bad effect in this respect. Before the 
age of ten it is more practiced by girls, later more by 
boys. Of course, it is altogether more frequent among 
boys and girls approaching puberty and later. It is 
not a disease, as the quacks try to persuade the ignor¬ 
amuses in order to make believe that a treatment is 
needed and so to extort heavy fees. No honest physi¬ 
cian will claim to *‘ cure” it, although he might be able 
to help the individual discard the habit by giving him 
a few general advices. 

It is very probable that almost all men and women 
have practiced masturbation some time during their 
lives. Like any other habit, it may be indulged in so 
much that it becomes temporarily—rarely permanent¬ 
ly—harmful. It is difficult to write about the effects 
of masturbation in a convincing manner, so as to con¬ 
vey to the reader the real truth, which is somewhere 
between the extreme theories that have become pop¬ 
ular ; here is how I would put it: Masturbation is not 
dangerous, it is usually harmless, but this does not 

199 


mean that its practice is hereby recommended; some¬ 
times it does have bad results, but this should not be 
misunderstood: one must not be alarmed at every 
case of masturbation and so suffer more from the con¬ 
sequences of the fear than from the habit itself. How¬ 
ever, all this applies to men and women, and boys and 
girls after thirteen or fifteen years of age. Among very 
young children, say between six and ten, especially 
when passionately and very frequently practiced, it 
is very harmful, sometimes fatal. In extreme cases it 
disturbs their appetite, their digestion, their sleep; 
they are less cheerful than other children; they do 
not play, they hide in dark corners and they are 
morose, gloomy, sullen, silent. Sometimes masturba¬ 
tion in children is a result of phimosis, inflammation of 
the vulva or vagina, an irritating condition of the 
urine, of the stool or of the skin, or it is due to con¬ 
stipation or to improper diet, or to all these causes 
combined, to which may be added the mental irritation 
due to wrong upbringing. 

As this is not a treatise on sex life, I shall limit 
myself here by giving just a few hints concerning the 
treatment of masturbation in children. 

Prevention is paramount. The region of and around 
the baby’s genitals should be kept perfectly clean 
and dry. Any redness or itching of the skin in those 
parts should be promptly and properly treated, as it 
may result in masturbation if neglected. It is easy 
to understand that by scratching or touching too often 
the organs the baby or the older child discovers a 
pleasure of which he never dreamed before and that 

200 


by repetition he will fall into the masturbation habit. 
The food should be simple, spiceless, mild; overnursing 
or overfeeding should be avoided. The bowels should 
be in order and, if worms are noticed in the stools, the 
child should immediately be treated for them, as they 
cause itching. 

The child should be occupied with toys and later 
with games and child-work. He should always be 
under distant, but careful supervision. Let him have 
liberty, but you should always be well posted as to 
what he is doing. Do not touch his body more than it 
is absolutely necessary. All children should empty 
their bladders before going to bed, they should always 
sleep alone, in a room without perfumes, with plenty 
of fresh, cool air. The bed should not be too softly 
made. Avoid feathers. The children should not tarry 
in bed after they awake. They should not hear from 
their parents dubious, ambiguous or equivocal words 
or jokes about sex, they should not see love scenes 
or anything that may evoke in them artificially a 
greater curiosity than it is natural and normal for 
them. But the parents should not be too prude and 
austere either and should not try to conceal their love 
to each other entirely; nor should they take extreme 
pains to hide their own body or the child’s body un¬ 
necessarily, as this would also arouse his suspicion and 
the effect would be bad. It is advisable that the mother 
and the father have separate beds. And last, but not 
least, answer the child’s questions truthfully and 
simply, but never more than he desires to know. 

If you find that the children masturbate or play 
201 


frith their genitals, dress them so that they should 
not be able to touch them. If they are old enough 
to understand you, tell them that the habit is harmful, 
that they may become ill from it, etc. This helps very 
much, particularly if the parents have not lost their 
children's confidence and if the latter know that their 
parents do not lie to them. Take care that the children 
should not postpone defecation and urination more 
than it is indispensable. If necessary, the children 
should be awakened in the night to empty their blad¬ 
der. Daily lukewarm baths with short, cold sprays 
over the whole body, will have a calming effect upon 
the excited nervous system. 

Sometimes the masturbating child must be entirely 
removed from the environment in which he lives and 
in which he meets those who taught him the habit. 

At the proper age, which may vary according to 
the circumstances in which they have lived and to 
their individual temperaments, girls should be ex- 
explained about menstruation and about the sex func¬ 
tions. In the same way, boys should learn about the 
innocuousness of erections and pollutions (if not more 
frequent than about once in two weeks or so), etc. 
Both boys and girls should also hear about the criminal 
maniacs of both sexes who entice children for their 
perverse passions, but they should not be made to 
believe that anyone who talks to them may harm them. 

Older children of both sexes should be taught all 
about the abnormal outgrowths of sex life, as venereal 
diseases, prostitution with its concomitant, the white 
slavery commerce, etc., and should be informed that 

202 


there is no need that immature individuals have in¬ 
tercourse; that on the contrary, it is often harmful 
to them; that usually sex maturity does not occur 
until about the age of 18 in girls and 20 in boys and 
that, while abstinence for a too long time may have 
bad effects, it is not noxious for a few years in very 
young men and women. Girls should be instructed 
that even when they are quite young, say fourteen or 
fifteen, if they are somewhat developed and menstru¬ 
ate, they may become pregnant through the external 
contact of the sex organs only. 

In addition to sex enlightenment the adolescent 
needs a strong dose of will power. Throughout all 
their childhood the importance of the will power should 
be strongly impressed on both the boy and the girl. 
They should learn to respect those who can master 
themselves as being really strong people, true heroes, 
who deserve to be honored. This will help the growing 
and ripening youths to withstand the terrible attacks 
on their minds and hearts coming from all sides, par¬ 
ticularly in our civilized countries. 


203 


Opposition to Sex Education 


In the last years many people have begun to realize 
that ignorance in sex matters is the cause of many 
crimes, of many cases of disease, of a wretched private 
life in all classes of society, and that the guilt falls 
largely on our prevailing harmful and unclean 
“morality”. A progressive minority in all countries 
understand now the importance and necessity of sexu¬ 
al education. Books, magazines, articles in the press 
treating the sex question have appeared and appear 
continually. Lectures and talks on sex are being 
delivered. But all this is only a small, and in certain 
regions an infinitesimal portion, of the work which is 
yet to be done. The conservatives protest and fight 
against it; they hinder as much as they can, they put 
as many obstacles in the way as possible. They have 
more or less authorized censors, who, under the pre¬ 
text of being the guardians of our “morals”, inter¬ 
fere with the diffusion of knowledge and truth. But 
even many liberally and radically minded people, full 
of superstitions and of the false precepts acquired in 
their own childhood, and still carrying the spiritual 

204 


yoke of the dark past, are against sexual enlighten¬ 
ment. 

One of the contentions of the opponents to sexual 
education is that its advocates are overstating the im¬ 
portance of the sex problems. The answer to this 
objection is that, whether we like it or not, sex is one 
of the main factors which decide our fate, which in¬ 
fluence us in every moment, which give a sense to our 
existence. How often is sex even a more important 
agent than nutrition! Not to speak of the fact that 
we are meant by nature, whose instruments we are, to 
multiply our species, there is rarely a person who has 
no sexual interests, whose mind is not busy a large 
part, nay, the largest part, of his or her life, with sex 
thoughts. Look around! You pronounce the words 
“father”, “mother”, — you talk sex. You recall 
the past generations. You think of the future gen¬ 
erations. Sex! Your nation — sex! Your wife, 
your children—sex! Try to speak for some time about 
anything unrelated to sex or in which sex should not 
be mentioned directly or indirectly, and you will see 
that this is impossible. Our literature, our theatre, 
our art is pervaded with sex. All the poets of all 
times have sung or have told us about some phases of 
sex life, these occupying sometimes the totality of their 
productions. What strikes us mainly in plants, in 
animals, is their sex life. Why then not be frank 
about itf 

Sex is the mainspring in our lives, the final motive 
of all our actions. Nevertheless, it is yet far from 
being thoroughly known and understood. Not only do 

205 


the majority of men ignore almost everything of our 
sex function, but even many of those whose duty it is 
to know% are but superficially informed. Only a few 
specialists, sexologists, are prepared to talk with as 
much knowledge as science and their own experience 
permits. The largest number of physicians are nearly 
totally blind in the sex question, and, as they are 
not engaged in this line of work, they often believe 
that we sexologists are extravagant in our claims. 

No, the importance and urgency of the sex prob¬ 
lems are not overestimated; they are underrated. 

Some of the reasons for the opposition to sex 
teaching are purely personal. With many it is because 
they themselves lack the true sex education. With 
others it is because they are morbidly passionate, 
filled with exaggerated, unnatural needs, so that they 
cannot read or hear in quietude the truth about sex 
life, without being bewildered and abnormally excited. 
Such talks or writings upset their equilibrium. They 
imagine others as corrupt as they are and they fear that 
a simple, true explanation of sex matters will have 
the same effect on others as it has on them. Still other 
people are adversaries of sex education because they 
are sexually unnaturally cold or impotent, or perverted 
or otherwise abnormal individuals, so that they, judg¬ 
ing the world from their own angle, cannot see the 
utility of such instruction. 

On the other hand, there are those who have mis¬ 
understood the meaning of the word “free love”, who 
have forgotten that it must be real love first of all, 
who use this expression as a cloak for all oronrscuous 


206 


experiments and all sorts of depraved habits and make 
it a theme for all kinds of ridiculous and humorous 
subjects. Such people, parading as advocates of sex 
teaching, are often mistaken for educators. They 
should be kept away from children upon whom they 
may have a sinister and nefarious influence. They 
chould be distinguished from the really progressive 
men and women, who believe in the beauty and moral¬ 
ity of all true love and in the necessity of sex instruc¬ 
tion, without having anything to hide under this be¬ 
lief,—the distinction to be made, not from their words 
only, but from their conduct as well. 

Notwithstanding all these calumnies and slanders 
against the idea of sex enlightenment and its advocates, 
in spite of all these difficulties from so many sides, 
the work is progressing daily and is helping to clean 
our lives more and more. 


207 


Conversations on Sex 


It is not necessary to describe an exact method of 
sex education for children, because they, if we take 
heed of their questions, always help and guide their 
parents. Each age, each phase of childhood brings its 
own questions, which, if properly answered, will be 
fully satisfactory for a long time, sometimes for years. 

At first, the child is interested to learn how babies 
come into the world. Grown-up folk, because they know 
all the a b c (but not more) of sex, fear that as soon a3 
he finds this out, the child will immediately investigate 
further and will desire to hear all the details of the 
sexual act itself. But we should not judge the child 
by ourselves. The knowledge that babies grow in their 
mothers’ bodies and come out from there when ripe 
and fully alive, is itself so romantic and marvelous a 
story, so gratifying for a child’s curiosity, that it will 
fill his mind for some time and will leave him perfectly 
content for a still longer time. Until much later, he 
will not ask anything concerning the father, because, 
spontaneously, unprovoked, no suspicion can arise in 
his simple mind as to the father's role in procreation. 

208 


Of course, the father is there, but so is the child him¬ 
self, so is sometimes the aunt and the grand’pa, etc. 
Just as it would never occur to him to ask for 
the reason of the existence of the trees, the hills and 
the city, so he will not be bothered by the presence of 
the father in the household,—until he has a valid 
reason for it, which occurs quite late. 

The conversations given below, between a mother 
and her little daughter, are typical or rather schematic 
examples, and may, of course, be modified according 
to the children’s questions, to their intelligence, to their 
previous preparation and to other circumstances. 
Their purpose is just to show the uninitiated parents 
what kinds of talks are possible. 

*It should be well understood that such conversa¬ 
tions are in reality not as brief as they are printed 
in this book and do not occur in the succession adopted 
here. Every one of them represents a condensation of 
a longer talk or of many talks between the parent and 
a child of a given age. The first one may be placed 
before or after the fifth year; the last one or a few 
similar ones perhaps after the twelfth year, this vary¬ 
ing according to the mental condition and previous 
opportunities of the child. 

Nor will the conversations be limited, finished and 
concluded with the last dialogue here given. They 
will have to go further and within the next months 
or years, as the case may be, the child will learn still 
more. 

If a normal child, after having reached a reasonable 
age, has never asked any questions about sex life, some- 

209 


thing is wrong. Either his upbringing has been faulty 
and therefore he is afraid of his parents, or he has 
found some secret sources of information, or he is not 
normally bright. In such cases it may become needful 
to do one of the following two things: to put the child 
in such situations that questions will necessarily arise 
(see animals giving birth to their little ones, attract¬ 
ing the child’s attention to the neighbor’s newly born 
baby, observations cf the relations between sexes in a 
poultry yard, etc.), or, if this is unavailable or unsuc¬ 
cessful, to provoke such conversations as may fit the 
child. Naturally, it would be unwise to start abruptly, 
without any relation to things which have occurred 
somewhere in the child’s surroundings, or to ideas or 
facts about which the child has read or heard. At 
such occasions the children should be encouraged to 
talk freely and frankly and to ask all they wish to 
learn. 


210 


Dialogues Between a Wise Mother and Her Danghter 

1 

—Mother, how did I come to you? 

—What do you mean? 

—I mean. . . Where did you get me? 

—Oh, I understand! . . . Why, I gave birth to you 
when you were a baby. You are born from me. 

—What means born? 

—You came out of me. 

—Of your body? 

—Yes. 

—Where did I lie in your body? 

—In the abdomen, here. 

—Do all the children come out of big people? 

—All the babies come out of their mothers. 

—And the mothers? 

—The mothers, when they are little, when they are 
born, come out of their mothers. 

—And the fathers? 

—The fathers too come out of their mothers. 

2 

—Mother, why must the babies lie in their mothers* 
bodies ? 


m 


—They must stay there in order to grow. They 
grow little by little, until they become real babies 
and until they are so large that they cannot stay inside 
any longer. 

—And if they come out before? 

—If they happen to come out before being ripe, 
they cannot live, they die soon. The babies are like 
fruits. Do you remember the apple tree near our 
house when we were in the country? 

• —Yes, I do. 

—Do you remember when the apples were small, 
very small? They were hanging on the tree and the 
sun warmed them up, the tree nourished them from 
inside, sending into them through fine tubes the nour¬ 
ishment which it took from the earth by its rootlets 
and roots and from the air by means of the leaves. 
Each little apple grew and grew, from green it became 
reddish and finally completely red and very large. 
The baby in the mother’s body grows in the same way. 
It gets heat and nourishment from the mother’s blood. 

—Mother, I love you! 

3 

—Mother, how do babies come out of the mother’s 
stomach ? 

—They come out through an opening which all 
the women have between their thighs and when that 
happens the mothers suffer great pains. 

—Pains ? 

—Yes, terrible ones. . . But, why do you cry? 

—You had awful pains on account of me. Mother, 
I love you so much! 


212 


4 

—Mother, don't you think that Helen, Mildred and 
Amy are liars? 

—Why do you ask me? 

—I told them how babies grow in their mothers' 
bodies and how they are bom, but Helen said it was 
not true. Her mother says the stork brings them. 
And Mildred laughed at me, because she thinks the 
doctor brings them in his satchel. She says she herself 
saw the doctor come with a leather bag when she 
got her baby brother. And Amy was told by her 
big sister that they get the babies in cabbage heads. 

—All this is untrue, but it is not their fault, my 
child. They were told lies. 

—Why? 

—Because the mothers and the other grown-up 
people were afraid to tell them the truth. 

—Why, mother? 

—Because they are foolish. They were afraid that 
the children would become bad if they knew the 
truth. 

5 

—Mother, I know why Mildred's mother stayed in 
bed when Mildred got her baby brother. 

—Why? 

—Because he came out of his mother’s body and 
his mother suffered pains. 

—Yes, dear. 

—And I understand why Mildred's mother had a 
big stomach before the baby was born. 

213 


—Why? 

—Because the baby was inside and growing. 

—Yes, my child. 

6 

—Mother, why does Mildred’s mother not tell 
Mildred the truth how she got the baby? 

—Because she is a fool. But it is not her fault 
either; they taught her that she must not tell. 

—Who taught her so? 

—Her mother. 

—And who taught that her mother? 

—Her mother’s mother . . . and so forth. Almost 
all mothers and fathers think that when a woman gets 
a baby they must be ashamed of it. 

—Mildred’s mother is ashamed? . . Ha, ha, ha! 

-Why do you laugh, dear? 

—Because she is ashamed. It is so nice to have a 
baby and to be a mother! 

7 

—Mother, how do the little kittens grow? 

—They grow in their mother’s belly,—you know, 
the big cat. Did you not notice how our cat’s belly 
became larger lately? She will soon give birth to 
baby kittens. The calf grows in the same way in his 
mother’s, the cow’s, belly; the sheep bear their lambs, 
the mother-dogs their puppies, and so on. 

—And the cat too will have pains when she will 
get the kittens? 

—Yes, my child, but not so much as a woman. 

214 


8 

—Mother, she got them! 

—Who? What? 

—The cat got the kittens in the cellar. 

—Did you see them? 

—Yes, they are so tiny! Why did she get four 
at a time? 

—That is the way the cats do. Not all animals 
are alike. The cow has usually one baby at a time; 
the woman also. But it often happens that a woman 
should get two babies together. 

—Mother, give me a piece of bread for the kittens. 

—No, my child, they do not need your bread and 
they cannot eat it. Their mother, the cat, will give 
them milk from her breasts until they’ll be bigger. 

—That is just like Mildred’s mother, who is nurs¬ 
ing her baby! 

—Of course. And I too nursed you from my breasts 
jwhen you were a baby. 

—Mother, I love you so much! 

9 

—Mother, do all animals come from their mothers' 
bodies? 

—All; but not in the same way. Many animals 
don’t bear them until the end. They bear the eggs 
only, to which they give birth, and afterwards they 
warm them under their bodies, sitting in a nest. The 
chicken lays eggs and when she has a number of them, 
she sits over them for many days. She broods them so 

215 


long under her feathers until the little chicks in the 
eggs hatch, that is, become ripe and are able to break 
the eggs from inside. Then they go out. All the birds 
do so. 

—Oh, how nice! 

—There are still other animals coming from eggs. 
But not all are hatched out by their mothers. Many 
are warmed up simply by the sun. 

—But the chickens have no breasts and no milk. 

—No, dear, they teach their little chicks to eat small 
grains and other things. The animals giving birth to 
babies, nurse them. Those which lay eggs, don’t nurse 
their babies. 

—Mother, from now on I shall watch all the 
animals, as you told me to do. It feels so good to 
know all about them! 

10 

—Mother, you told me once that the apples were 
the babies of the apple tree. Do the apples have a 
mother only? 

—No, dear, in the tree there is the father and the 
mother together. 

—On one tree? 

—Yes, on one tree. You don’t believe it? I’ll show 
you when we’ll be in the country. Do you think that 
all living creatures are alike? Don’t you see, for in¬ 
stance, that the trees cannot leave their places, while 
we, and other animals, can walk, fly or swim? But 
there are trees and other plants in which the mother 


216 


and the father, that is the female and the male parts, 
are not together, not on the same plant, not on the 
same tree. 

—How does the little apple begin to grow! 

—Look here. This is a picture of a flower of an 
apple tree. In the spring, when it is blossoming time 
for the apple tree, we’ll go out in the country for a 
Sunday, and I’ll show you real flowers. But now we 
have to be satisfied with this picture. Those are the 
male parts and this is the female part. From the male 
part comes out this fine yellow powder or dust and 
enters into the female part. This dust is composed 
of very small grains and not all of them go into the 
female part. When such grains get in, there starts 
in the female part a great change, a great work, which 
is the first beginning of the growth of the baby. 

—Of which baby? 

—Of the little apple. 

—Oh, I understand. And in that place the big apple 
grows up? 

—Yes, dear. 

—And these little fathers and mothers go back 
inside the tree? 

—No, the female part or some portion of it bears 
the baby, the apple, until the apple becomes ripe. 
The male part and all that part of the flower which is 
not used for the formation of the fruit, shrivels and 
falls from the tree, and in the following spring new 
flowers grow. 

—Oh, that is why I see the flowers fall down in 


21 


the spring! It is so beautiful! Sometimes it is like 
enow on the ground. 

—Yes, you saw that on our walks. Many blossoms 
fall down before they have had a chance to produce 
fruits. 

—But, mother, I never knew before why flowers 
were needed. I thought they were there just for 
beauty’s sake. 

—There is a reason for everything, my child. 

11 

—You once told me that all the women have an 
opening for the babies. Do you have one? 

—Yes, dear, all the women and all the girls have it 
and it leads to parts that we call the female organs 
and which make them mothers. But in little girls 
those organs are not entirely developed, that is, they 
are not fully grown, and they cannot be mothers. 

—Where are those organs? 

—Deep inside, in the body; but the entrance is 
outside. 

—Oh, I know, the entrance is where the babies 
come out when they are born. 

—Yes, my dear. 

—You told me that the baby grows in the mother’s 
body. In which part of the body are the female organs? 

—In the lower part of the abdomen. 

—But where are the male organs in the fathers? 

—Between their thighs. 

—Oh, now I understand; I have seen them in baby 
boys. 


218 


12 

—Do the animals have the male and the female 
organs on separate bodies? 

—In most animals the fathers are different from 
the mothers, just like in man. For instance, there is 
a male cat and a female cat; the rooster is a father 
and the hen is a mother. 

—And the eggs are the babies? 

—They are unripe babies. 

—Yes, I know that their mother, the hen, warms 
the eggs to make them be real babies, chicks. 

—Very well, my child. 

—But in flowers the male and the female part are 
near each other, and it is easy for the yellow dust to 
enter the female part. How can it be with the hen? 

—You are wrong, my child. It is not as easy as 
that in all the flowers. In some plants the female part, 
although on the same individual plant, is distant from 
the male part, while in other plants they are situated 
in different plants which grow far from each other 
in various places of the field or forest. One tree may 
bear female flowers only and another tree male flowers 
only. 

—How do they meet? 

—How? The bees and other insects and the wind 
help them. They carry the yellow dust to some of the 
female flowers; I’ll explain you more about this later 
and we’ll look it up in the book. . . But you asked 
me how the male and the female parts of the rooster 
and the hen meet. 

—Yes, that is what I want to know. 

219 


—The rooster has, instead of a yellow dust, a sub* 
stance which comes out from his male organs which are 
on the hind part of his body between his legs. This 
substance contains the male germs which, when united 
with the female ones of the hen, form the beginnings 
of the egg, that is, of the future baby. The male 
matter enters the female organs, whose opening lies 
on the hind part of the hen’s body, between her legs. 

—But how does this substance come from the rooster 
to the hen? 

—Do you remember, when we were in the country, 
you saw the rooster jump on the hen, and you always 
used to chase him off? 

—Oh, I see! . . . That’s what it was ? I thought he 
was biting her. 

—No, dear, while their male and female parts 
touched each other, the rooster’s organ entered the 
hen’s opening and left inside that substance about which 
I told you before; at the same time the rooster and 
the hen embraced each other in their way. It makes 
them great pleasure. It is the same with the male and 
female cat, with the male and female dog, and so on. 

—This is wonderful! . . . Does this happen with 
men and women too? 

—Yes, dear, when they are big enough to be fathers 
and mothers* 


220 


FIFTH PAST 


Health and the Child 



Introductory Remarks. —To do justice to the sub¬ 
ject “health and the child”, a popular book on the 
physical care of children from the point of view and 
in the light of rational bringing-up, would be neces¬ 
sary, a work which I may take up some day. 

Here I do not intend to go into many details and 
to be complete. I merely wish to say a few words con¬ 
cerning those items of child hygiene which are more 
closely connected with the mental and moral problems 
of the child’s upbringing. 

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the 
child’s physical and moral bringing-up and we are 
not always certain where one begins and the other 
ends. Often coercion to eat, for instance, is not used 
for the purpose to induce the child to get more nourish¬ 
ment, that is for his bodily benefit, but it is just one 
of the many incidents in the method of employing 
force in dealing with the child as a means to discipline 
him morally. 

Health questions are yet in the debatable stage 
and will be so for a long time yet. Even in some of 
the questions of principle the greatest masters are far 

223 


from reaching an agreement. The science of hygiene 
is in the process of formation and many a “truth” 
of yesterday—indeed only of thirty, twenty and ten 
years ago—is denied to-day. And nevertheless most 
parents, laymen, claim to be so cock-sure about their 
hygienic theories and rules as to impose them tyran¬ 
nically on their offspring. It never occurs to them to 
take in consideration some of the desires, the so-called 
whims and caprices of the child, which may be based 
on sound, if obscure, instinctive needs; they are never 
aware of the fact that he is closer to nature than the 
adult. In this interference with the child’s tastes and 
preferences reigns the same incorrect principle as all 
along the line,—that the parents know it all, that they 
are infallible. 

The people, as a rule, are extremely obedient to the 
healing professions; therefore, they cling stubbornly 
to the advices of the latter. Of course, when medical 
science advances, the public will advance too, but only 
after it will be able to discard the teachings previously 
gotten and now fallen in disgrace or desuetude. As a 
whole, the lay public (and the majority of the rank 
and file, that is, of the mediocre part, of the medical 
profession) of to-day follows tenaciously the principal 
tenets, including the superstitions, of hygiene, of the 
teachers of yesterday. To-morrow’s public will adopt 
to-day’s doctrines. Of course, some of the beliefs, some 
of the knowledge inherited from previous generations 
—recent and long past—are mixed with the newly ac¬ 
cepted dogmas. When we realize this state of affairs, we 
may ask ourselves, What right have the adults to 

224 


dictate to their children any order or line of conduct in 
matters pertaining to health? 

Physiologically and pathologically, children vary 
sufficiently from the adults to warrant the existence 
of a special child hygiene and a specialty of children's 
diseases. But intrinsically and as a matter of principle 
they are much the same as the adults. After the age 
of infancy and as soon as all his teeth have made their 
appearance, the child may eat more or less the same 
kinds of foods as the adult, although he must and does 
eat comparatively more of them to allow for his growth. 
His errors in diet will be punished by nature along the 
same general lines as in the grown-up folk. 

Although the child is regarded as frail, he is by 
nature relatively more resistant than his seniors, and 
than he himself will be in the future. Logically, he 
should gain in vitality and resistance as he advances 
in life; but society, the family and our so-called care 
deprive him in the majority of the cases, gradually, 
of some of his precious power to withstand disease. 
In the course of time, he loses a good deal of the hygien¬ 
ic qualities and forces with which he is usually en¬ 
dowed in the first four or five years of his life, and 
much of this loss is due to the physical and mental 
conditions in which he is forced to live. 

We should think that physicians ought to be the 
people’s best models in health matters and that one 
ought to be safe in copying and imitating them. But 
it is well known that the doctor dies at about the same 
.average age as other persons of his social rank, that 
the causes of his death point to the same errors against 


225 


health which are committed by all uneducated and 
neglectful sinners; he suffers from the same defects 
and wrong habits as everybody else. Therefore his 
children are hygienically not better up than their 
companions who originate from mere laymen. 

There is no more pitiful sight than a young and 
newly married couple after the birth of their first 
child. The mother had been either a working girl or 
one of those girls who are taught all sorts of tricks 
which are useful for one purpose only, to catch a 
husband. Such a mother has no idea as to what a 
baby is. The father is not even supposed to know. 
He does not dare to touch the darn thing with his 
clumsy, large, rough, horny hands, for fear he might 
crush it. The neighbors and the aunts, the grand¬ 
mothers and other women-folk who abound in volun¬ 
teer advices, are all ridiculously misinformed and con¬ 
tradict themselves constantly,—even the one who pro¬ 
fesses to know a whole lot because she has had fifteen 
children, although she never mentions how many have 
died and how many hundreds of times they have been 
ill through her fault or ignorance. 

How well would it be now, how good would the 
young mother feel, if she had studied with the same 
assiduity all about the handling and care of a baby 
as she did for the purpose of becoming proficient in 
dancing! 

Yes, a school for future mothers is at least as valu¬ 
able as a dancing school. Schools in which young 
girls should be taught health conservation in babies , 
should function everywhere and should impart those 

226 


few simple ideas that are contained in child hygiene 
and only those which are uncontested; such schools 
should encourage the pupils to think health, also to 
think and reason independently and never to ignore 
the child’s desires. Such schools should help the students 
to unlearn almost all they have gathered from their 
mothers, neighbors, and from most of the books and 
magazines. 

A number of books on the care of the child are cir¬ 
culating among the people. Some of them are written 
by famous specialists and are very good in some re¬ 
spects. But they all suffer from the common defect to 
disregard almost entirely the child’s wishes and to be 
founded on the old despotical methods of upbringing. 

The city dispensary or “milk station” where 
mothers are invited to bring their babies and get the 
necessary information is respected by mothers in virtue 
of the fact that it is supposed to be authoritative. But 
what is an institution of the health department? One 
in which ordinary, average physicians and nurses are 
employed. Why should it be so astonishing, then, that 
the women often get there advices which are contrary 
to the welfare of their babies, as it has been seen many 
times, and that some of the mothers feel themselves 
superior in knowledge to most of these doctors and 
nurses ? 

If a child seems lacking in brightness, try to find 
out whether his eyesight and hearing are normal, and 
see to it that he should live for some time in good 
physical conditions, before you consider him mentally 
abnormal or deficient. 


227 


Birth Control. —Proper care of babies and children 
is well nigh impossible in a worker’s family with too 
many children. Therefore, one of the first duties of 
most of the parents toward their offspring is to limit 
their number. Public health authorities and city and 
central government agencies, if they really mean to 
improve the people’s health, should distribute freely 
enticonceptional means, should teach their use and 
should encourage the invention of the best preventive 
methods. 

Influences During Pregnancy. —As a general rule 

it is true that if the mother suffers physically and 
mentally during her pregnancy, the baby may—not 
must!—be abnormally weak and below the average 
in many respects. But, without going into further dis¬ 
cussions, I may say that it is wrong to conclude from 
this, as some do, that the mother is able to confer 
wonderful talents and qualities to the future child, if, 
during pregnancy, she endeavors to see and hear beau¬ 
tiful things, as, for instance, charming music. This? 
superstition is just as untrue as the belief that 
the sight of a mouse will cause the baby to have a 
gray mark and the fright due to a fire will give him 
a red sign. Of course, it is also erroneous and silly 
to think, as many do, that the baby will certainly be 
an idiot because the mother happened to see an idiotic 
child some time after conception. 

Remnants of Savagery.—To hang on rings on the 
baby’s ears, often perforating the ear lobes, is not only 

m 


a cruel operation, but it constitutes a violation of the 
child’s future will and an abuse of her present help¬ 
lessness. 

Some civilized parents still ornate their child with 
all sorts of amulets which are supposed to protect him 
from illness. This has a bad effect on the chlid’s mind 
and body, as he learns to rely for his health on miracles 
and not on rational preventive measures. 

Circumcision. —This is a simple, usually harmless 
operation by which the foreskin of the penis is partly 
or totally removed. It is necessary in cases of a high 
degree of phimosis, a condition of narrowness of the 
prepuce, which may be a consequence of some diseases 
in adult men, but which, when present in the baby, 
is congenital. If the phimosis is slight, it is most easy 
to make it innoxious by a few daily, gradual, gentle, 
painless dilatations. It is true that circumcision pre¬ 
vents the accumulation of secretion and dirt around 
the extremity of the viril organ, although the same 
result may be attained by simply keeping the foreskin 
clean and bathing it on both external and internal 
sides as often as any other part of the body, which 
requires no particular effort. But many people, and 
among them physicians, who, of course, have a profes¬ 
sional interest in the matter, claim for circumcision 
more than this, namely that it is a means to prevent 
venereal contagion or to diminish its possibility. This 
i3 totally untrue. Since the Jews, whose males are 
practically all circumcised, live under the same marital 
conditions as other races, as they mostly do in the 

229 


United States, they are just as much a prey to venereal 
diseases as other persons. Of course, for the Hebrews 
and for most of the other peoples who circumcise their 
boys, this practice has a religious significance, notwith¬ 
standing the quasi-scientific or false hygienic excuses of 
many half emancipated Jews who cannot get rid of their 
ancient fanaticism and who wish to give it a modern 
appearance. That circumcision, which is a covenant 
between the people of the bible and its god, must be 
regarded as a sacrificial and symbolic rite dating from 
very great antiquity, is incontestable. Without going 
into details, I may say here that it still exists among 
many backward tribes—in some it is practiced on both 
sexes—and it always represents a sacrifice to a divin¬ 
ity and often, if done at the proper age, an introduction 
into mature life or a sanctification of the reproductive 
power. 

Kissing.—One of the most revolting customs is the 
forcible kissing of children. It is one of those abuses 
which almost any adult considers as his right and 
which he arrogates to himself presumptuously, without 
the least regard of the youngsters’ feelings, nay, even 
in face of their most strenuous objections. Promiscu¬ 
ous kissing is not only a moral misuse; it is also one 
of the surest means to propagate disease. While it is 
wrong to overrate the dangers of disease contagion, 
it is certainly a mistake to underestimate its possibil¬ 
ities, especially in connection with the mouth and nose, 
which are the main entrances and outlets of infection. 

Parents should protect their children against kiss¬ 
ing and should teach them to protect themselves 

230 


Vaccination. —While I do not agree with the alarm¬ 
ing cries spread by the anti-vaccinationists about vac¬ 
cination, while I hold it to be harmless in the majority 
—by no means in all—of the cases, I am convinced that 
it is not needed. The argument that small-pox had 
made frightful ravages before vaccination was known, 
yet is comparatively uncommon now, is not a proof 
for me that vaccination is indispensable. Any im¬ 
partial, dispassionate and unbiased student will ex¬ 
plain this easily after he will have found out the dif¬ 
ference between the sanitary and general living con¬ 
ditions before and after the era of vaccination; he will 
not recur to vaccination as an explanation of the im¬ 
provement, because he will understand that it happened 
to coincide with the general trend of progressive move¬ 
ments in all walks of life. He will take in consideration 
the fact that bad epidemics of other diseases which 
have decimated humanity in the past have all but 
disappeared from civilized countries, although no 
vaccination has been used in the fight against them. 
At the same time he will know that the number of 
deaths really due to smallpox in former centuries has 
been greatly exaggerated. 

It is clear that if vaccinations and comparatively 
frequent re-vaccinations are necessary preventives of 
small-pox, as their advocates claim, the same must hold 
true with regard to a number of other diseases, and 
we should be continually vaccinated and re-vaccinated 
or similarly treated as a prevention against many 
other diseases,—which is absurd, not to speak of the 
fact that such views interfere with the application of 

231 


the principles of real prevention and of the true rules 
of cleanliness and health, which, if prophylactic vac¬ 
cination is correct, become senseless. 

Drugs. —How often does it happen that a child 
struggles with all the strength at his disposal against 
the introduction of a medicine by his mother into his 
alimentary tract! We may say without fear of erring 
that in at least ninety-nine out of a hundred such cases 
the child is instinctively right, and the parents, who 
think they are saving him, are wrong. It is impossible to 
estimate how many times the zeal of such well-meaning 
parents has been the cause of the death of their beloved 
ones, but there is no doubt that this has occurred in 
very many instances,—and in making this statement I 
have in mind not only the self-dispensed drugs, but 
the internal medicaments prescribed by physicians as 
well. And such deaths have been caused not only by 
the fiendish drug users, but also by those people who, 
having heard that it was stylish to be opposed to drugs, 
are protesting against their use, but in reality are dop¬ 
ing themselves and their children with mixtures, which 
they do not call medicines. The modern pediatrician 
who claims “not to give many medicines”, but who 
has chosen a few which he prescribes in all forms to 
every one of his little patients, is just as guilty as the 
outright old-fashioned doctor. And so is the ignoramus 
who calls himself nature doctor and his stuff “herbs” 
instead of “medicines”. 

How can one be indifferent to this condition of 
affairs, when one is convinced that medicaments (of 
which a few are sometimes useful and should be given 

232 


in very rare cases only) are generally hurtful, and 
when one thinks how often the beginnings of a chronic 
constipation in children are to be traced to the castor 
oil so profusely administered to them, the inception 
being sometimes in the first day of their life ? Tubercu¬ 
losis of the lungs may be due to the reliance on cough- 
drops and other narcotic and soothing medicines which 
cause the neglect of taking the proper preventive and 
timely curative measures. The same may be said about 
the so-called tonics and blood medicines, the appetiz¬ 
ing drops, the nerve remedies, and so on ad nauseam . 
Millions of lives have been and are being sacrificed 
to the greed of some drug manufacturers and of their 
partners, the newspapers, all criminals, without regard 
to the high sounding names of the true or fake indors¬ 
ers of the drugs and without regard to the political 
standard of the papers! More millions of lives are 
being crippled through drugs, commencing from in¬ 
fancy, than through all the wars combined! 

Surgical Operations. —Who can deny the wonderful 
results of the marvelous progress of surgery in the 
last century? Yet, in some respects the advancement 
in surgical technique, skill and knowledge has done 
and is doing also much harm. After all, surgeons are 
human beings, and, except a few, not superior beings, 
not supermen. They are not always at the summit of 
knowledge of their specialty, they are rarely as cap¬ 
able and as conscientious as they are required to be, 
they seldom belong to the specimens of humanitarians 
who have solely the interest of their patients at heart. 


233 


Others make involuntary and unintentional mistakes, 
not to speak of the inherent errors of surgery as 
such, especially in the cases when the operation is but 
a palliative and when it does not even touch the cause 
of the evil. Besides, surgery has the misfortune of 
being able to do too much; because of the existence 
of anaesthesia and aseptic methods, many surgeons 
have the audacity to undertake works which do im¬ 
mense harm 

Many operations in the nose, throat, etc., of chil¬ 
dren are done without sufficient deliberation, without 
an effort at more conservative, if slower, treatment. 

The more cultured an individual, the easier he sub¬ 
mits to an operation, because he has a holy respect 
for anything which looks and sounds scientific. When 
some simple illiterate women rioted, some years ago, 
in front of the public schools, as it has happened re¬ 
peatedly in this country, because their children’s ton¬ 
sils had to be extirpated more or less indiscriminately, 
they were held in great contempt; and yet in a number 
of instances I had the occasion to convince myself that 
thev were right. 

Fads.—The medical profession is unjust in its ignor¬ 
ance of all the knowledge to be gained from those 
outside it who have new medical theories. There is 
truth in osteopathy, in chiropractic, in Christian science, 
but, on the other hand, it is a great mistake to herald 
these fads as sciences. Each of these schools presup¬ 
poses one cause or so for almost all bodily troubles and 
treats them with one-sided remedies,—which is in itself 

234 


a monstrosity. Except this, these professions are com¬ 
posed of men and women the great majority of whom 
lack the proper education and have studied their 
specialty within a short time. The fact that their 
criticism of the regular medical profession is partly 
right gives them the possibility of being more dis¬ 
honest than those whom they criticize, a possibility 
of which many take advantage. 

Parents must be extremely careful to whom they 
entrust their sick child. I know that this advice, not 
giving them a definite idea as to how they should act 
and what exactly they should avoid, is unsatisfactory. 
But we live in a transitory medical period, and fair¬ 
ness dictates not to be too accurate in indicating our 
preferences. The people should be warned, but further 
investigation and choice should remain with them. 

The Senses.—If necessary the senses could be 
trained. There are worked-out methods for that pur¬ 
pose and special methods for individual children may 
be evolved. The eyesight, the sense of touch, of taste, 
of smell, of hearing may be perfected to a high degree 
through plays and games in which the respective organs 
are put to such pleasurable work in which strain and 
effort is avoided 

Too much physical and mental strain as well as 
frequent punishment and fear of punishment seem to 
be among the causes of myopia. 

Gibberish Talk.—If you wish that the child should 
talk early and well and that he should not have a 

235 


hard time correcting his speech later, if yon wish to 
prevent speech defects, talk to the baby clearly, dis¬ 
tinctly, exactly, slowly and as correctly as possible. 

Speech Defects, particularly stammering , are due 
to a combination of causes, which differ from case to 
case, but which consist mostly of: severe punishments, 
fear at home and in school, the difficalty of changing 
the first incorrect talk learned as a baby into the more 
correct talk needed later, instinctive imitation of other 
stammerers and too much self-consciousness while 
talking. 

Consequently defective speech may be prevented 
if the society of stammerers is avoided, if deliberate 
talk is used with the child from babyhood, if we insist, 
without attracting his attention too much to that, 
that he, as soon as he is able to talk, pronounce every 
word distinctly, carefully and never hastily; if we 
bring him up without the fear of punishments and 
Without maltreatment, so that his nervous system re¬ 
main intact. 

Physical punishments are not only unwise, unjust, 
ineffective and mentally harmful; they are also injuri¬ 
ous to the body. To hit a child means to hurt him some¬ 
where, and if the parent’s temper becomes ungovern¬ 
able and uncontrollable, he is never certain how hard 
his blow will be and where it will land. I have seen 
and treated children injured by their fathers and 
mothers in the most cruel manner; almost any organ 
or part of the body may be wounded. 

Big, callous palms and the dorsal parts of the hands; 

236 


clenched, bony fists as hard as a hammer; feet with 
the shoes on; rulers; wooden sticks and rods; iron 
tools; lashing leather belts; free swinging boots; 
switching whips; the cat o’ nine tails; regular rope; 
kitchen utensils; bottles, etc., are a few of the more 
prevalent objects used to “subdue’’ and “teach’ 7 the 
child. Pinching him; biting him; throwing him violent¬ 
ly against the wall, against the edge of the table; 
pushing him down the stairs; flogging him after he 
fell and because he hurt himself, instead of consoling 
him,—are frequent events and popular procedures. 
Fractures, luxations, hemorrhages, tooth extractions, 
deformations, bruises, cuts, lacerations and sometimes 
direct or indirect chronic diseases and death are the 
consequences. Many permanent deformities, many dis¬ 
figured faces and misshapen noses are the result of 
these delicate methods which have their defenders 
among so-called educators. The more deliberate and 
calculated tortures,—as to kneel on pebbles for hours; 
to stay in the corner looking to the wall; to be locked 
in in the toilet or in a dark room, that is, a room with¬ 
out light and fresh air, which are so essential to health, 
or in the clothes closet; to write a word three hundred 
times; to be kept in the house instead of going out 
for play and walk; to be deprived of food, etc.,—all 
these heinous tortures are injurious to the body in one 
way or in another and have the effect of wrecking the 
nervous system temporarily or permanently. 

Fear. —Fight fear, unwarranted and unjustifiable 
fear, as much as possible, as it could lead to illness as 

2S7 


well as to mental abnormalities. When something has 
frightened the child, never leave in his mind a doubt 
about it. Show him the object which scared him, and 
explain him why it did. 

Habit Movements. —Habit movements, also called 
spasms or tics convulsifs , are mostly acquired by imita¬ 
tion. They should not be neglected, as they may last a 
long time and may result in hideous and grotesque dis¬ 
tortions of the face. They may begin with a slight pres¬ 
sure of the eyelids, which may increase little by little 
in intensity and frequency. Later other portions of 
the face become affected and get twisted at regular 
intervals into funny contortions and grimaces. Often 
the shoulders, the neck and the arms take part in the 
performance. Explain the child what the consequences 
might be and how ugly these habits are, appeal to his 
will-power, to his bravery, to fight the habits. 

Little girls, seeing the attention paid by everybody 
to a woman with a hysterical attack, often simulate 
hysteria until they have real spells. Of course, hysteria 
is due to a certain physical and mental condition of 
the patient, but imitation is often a contributory cause. 
Talk to them seriously before it is too late; do not 
ignore or disregard such a condition. And also be 
sure that you, the parents, especially the mothers, are 
not too fussy about disease and do not delight in being 
a petted victim of sickness or an imitator of others 
whose sole distinction consists of being ill. 

Perhaps I may add here that to let the children 
remain with the habit of carrying an artificial nipple 

238 


between their lips until they are quite old (sometimes 
one sees them with it at the age of five or six), is a 
mistake both from the mental and physical standpoint. 
In fact, such a nipple should never be given to any 
child. 

Clothes. —As to clothes, I just want to remind the 
parents that the child is not an adult and that he 
must not be dressed according to our standards as 
to what is good for him. Sometimes we are right, 
but more often we are worng. The child may not feel 
cold when we do; he may feel warm when we don’t. 
He may need less clothes than we in a cold day. 

Naked legs as a winter style sometimes are another 
way of making the child suffer. If he complains that 
his legs are cold, he should wear stockings; if he is 
satisfied with his bare legs, let him have his way. 

Most of the children, especially boys, hate hats; 
let them have their heads free and let the breeze blow 
freshness into their hair. Of course, they should have 
a hat or cap when necessary, that is, when the skull 
is exposed for a very long time to the sun or the ears 
to the frost. But if the child has become accustomed 
to cold and sunshine and does not mind them, you 
should not mind it either. By the way, wearing a hat 
is largely a matter of convention, as it is evidenced 
by the fact that we wear it when going out in the eve¬ 
ning when there are no sun rays to disturb us. We are 
more utilitarian with umbrellas than with hats. For 
adults it may be more difficult to go about hatless than 
to expound original ideas; but fortunately it is not 

239 


so for children. Besides, of late I have become 
more and more convinced that to be often bare-headed, 
that is to expose the head to much light and sunshine 
(not extremely so!) is healthy for the hair. 

As often and as much as possible keep your baby 
completely naked and let the larger child, particularly 
if you live in the country, stay undressed as long as 
it is feasible. Let their bodies bathe in the air. It 
is healthy for them. 

Bathing.—A normal child should get used to cold 
baths from babyhood. They are invigorating, stimu¬ 
lating. They should be taken summer and winter. Of 
course, this does not mean that warm and lukewarm 
baths are not recommended, when needed. By a cold 
bath I mean one whose temperature is below 65 degrees 
Fahrenheit; various degrees of cool baths between 65 
and 75 d. F.; various degrees of lukewarm between 
75 and 90 d. F.; warm above 90 d. F. As may be seen, 
my gradation differs somewhat from the usual one, as 
found in some books on the subject. 

Air.—Parents who keep their children too much 
in the house prepare them for consumption, anemia, 
indigestion and other troubles. The child needs the 
great outdoors as much as possible, which, however, 
does not signify that it is good for him, as it is often 
seen, to play in the street until eleven o’clock in the 
evening and later, when he should be fast asleep in 
his bed. The child’s bedroom should be as sunny and 
as airy as possible. Do not forget that his whole 
future physical frame, much of his health condition as 

240 


a man, depends on his present life. Do not bargain 
with the windows, keep them well open and the child’s 
bed near the window and where a moderate draft 
changes the air constantly. In cold nights he should 
be warmly dressed, wrapped and covered; he should 
feel warm, but the inhaled air should be cool or cold. 
If you have but few rooms, let the best ones be the 
sleeping rooms. 

Do not forget that the fact that the child has had 
fresh air during his vacation in the country or for a 
few hours in the park, does not preclude the necessity 
of his breathing fresh air later. He needs it always; 
he needs a vacation every day. 

As many school teachers are still uneducated con¬ 
cerning fresh air and as many of them are so lightly 
dressed that they cannot stand the open window in 
the winter, it is the duty of intelligent parents to super¬ 
vise the class room and to do all in their power in 
order to improve it. Often children become dull and 
debile, and sometimes ill, on account of improperly 
ventilated class rooms. It should be borne in mind 
that of all the ventilating systems, the best, the most 
effective is the simplest, the open window. This has 
been found out by experiments and by practice. 

Food. —Fancy food, white bread, polished rice, white 
crackers, etc., are unhealthy foods; they may please a 
corrupt palate, they may even still the hunger, but 
they do not feed a child sufficiently, they do not give 
him all the strength that he is entitled to get from the 
food. The simplest foods and combinations are the best. 


241 


Destroying a few food superstitions: It is wrong 
to believe that fruit and milk eaten together are harm¬ 
ful and that starchy food combined with fruit is harm¬ 
ful. Sugar, candies, ice-cream are good for children. 
I repeat, they are good! It is foolish to think that all 
children, the world over, are eternally conspiring to 
bother their parents for sweets; sweets are a great 
necessity for the child. Nor are the teeth spoiled by 
confections. The teeth decay because the parents are 
careless and fail to clean them, or on account of other 
sins of hygiene. Hard eggs are not difficult to digest 
and are not dangerous. Fruits and nuts of all sorts, 
so much craved by children, are wonderfully healthy 
and indispensable foods for children of all ages. This 
includes the much dreaded, but very nourishing and 
health giving banana and the much calumniated pea¬ 
nut; also the cherry, plum, strawberry and other ber¬ 
ries. Starchy foods are wholesome and good in every 
respect. A child needs less protein food than the books 
usually recommend. Milk is good, but it is easy to 
take too much of it, because it is a very nourishing 
and liquid , not solid and bulky, food. If a child drinks 
much milk, do not complain of his ‘‘lack of appetite”; 
he is unable to eat much of other food. If a child likes 
no milk, do not force him to drink it; replace it by 
other food. What I just said about milk, may be said 
about eggs. If the child dislikes cooked food, there 
is no harm; he can find sufficient raw (that is, sun 
cooked) food which may be just as good or better. 
Mothers, do not be conceited; your cooking may not 
be as good as you think, after all; besides, it is a mat- 

242 


ter of taste, and he has a right to his own taste, he 
does not need to have yours. Always mind the child’s 
taste, if possible, and try to find out what he likes. 
If a child refuses soup or broth, do not provoke a 
scandal; the usual soups are not worth it, as they gen¬ 
erally contain very little real food. There is no harm 
if a child makes sometimes a meal out of sweets alone 
or of fruit alone, without any other addition. If you 
see that the child likes his food without salt, do not 
salt it for him. Not only raw fruit is good for almost 
all normal children, but some of the raw vegetables are 
also to be recommended. Yet very few mothers allow 
their children to eat them. Rarely will a mother permit 
her child to eat a raw, teeth-strengthening, healthy 
carrot in preference to her mushy, boiled, spoiled, 
fattened, sugared, prepared carrot. Is it not because 
she subconsciously feels that if the child can eat many 
raw foods, he will need her much less? 

A child can live and develop perfectly well without 
meat or fish or anything made of them. Vegetarian 
parents are often advised to the contrary when con¬ 
sulting meat eating physicians; but the latter just re¬ 
peat what they have heard or read and none of them 
or their authorities have ever given vegetarianism an 
impartial and fair and sufficiently long trial. 

It is wrong to prohibit children, as some authors do, 
raw and ripe tomatoes (which are excellent for every¬ 
body), cucumbers, celery and sweet potatoes. 

Water drinking should never be denied a child. 
It is not true that it is harmful to drink when one per¬ 
spires or when one has fever; on the contrary, it is abso- 

243 


lutely necessary and healthy, the belief to the contrary 
dating from previous generations of physicians, who, 
thinking that they must forbid what their patients 
wanted and must force them to take what they felt 
like refusing, denied fresh air to the consumptive and 
gave much food to those who could not take any at all. 

Coffee, tea, spices, alcoholic drinks of all sorts, if 
taken in abundance, or even moderately but frequently, 
are harmful to adults and children alike, but partic¬ 
ularly to children. Do not eat and drink these things 
yourself and do not teach them their use, as far as 
it depends on you. 

Never coax your child to eat or drink hot 
food. Many of our diseases are due to burning our 
digestive tube, including the mouth, with food of an 
abnormally high temperature. We easily get into the 
habit of swallowing soup which is hotter than our 
stomach can tolerate and which children, if left to 
themselves, would never accept. Intelligent parents 
should understand that no food is less or more nourish¬ 
ing because of a difference of temperature and should 
allow their children to eat cold food if they so desire. 

The reason why most of the false food beliefs, of 
which only a few have just been mentioned here, have 
originatedl and taken root, lies in the fact that the bad 
effects of OYEREATING have been mistaken for 
the effects of the foods and considered as arising from 
the foods as such, and attributed to them. / have no 
doubt that overeating in adult life with all its train 
of suffering and disease and its toll of death, is due 
to the criminal , although well-intentioned, habit of 


244 


mothers to force or coax their babies and children to 
eat more than they want or to eat at the time when 
they desire no food . 

No harm can result if you heed the following ad¬ 
vices and rules: 

Do not nurse or feed the baby more often than 
six times in twenty-four hours; usually four times will 
do. The child over two years should never be fed 
more than four times and the tendency should be to 
reduce the meals to three in twenty-four hours. A 
child of school age who does not care for breakfast, 
will fare better if he eats but twice daily. Better less 
meals and good digestion than more meals and poor 
digestion. Just introducing food into the stomach is 
not the object of eating; eating without digesting— 
without digesting thoroughly—is not only useless, but 
harmful. Let all the desired food, including fruits, 
nuts, sweets, etc., be consumed at the meal and nothing 
between meals. All fruits are food—orange too, 
mothers!—and should be considered as such. Do not 
hurry the child to eat for fear of his missing school. 
Slow eating and good chewing is more important than 
going to school. Eating hastily is bad at any time. 
Never force a child to eat. He must be hungry, really 
hungry, to eat. Give the children sufficient fruits or 
sweets at the table and they will not eat them sur¬ 
reptitiously and in too large a quantity and so suffer 
from indigestion. Let the illegal become legal. But 
at the meal, leave enough space for the fruits and 
sweets; do not force the children to satiate them¬ 
selves first fully with other foods, as this would result 

245 


in overeating. Eating without a real desire for food 
is also overeating. Whether we eat too much of one 
kind of food or of a few foods together, the result is 
the same; it is overeating, and we pay dear for it. 
To underfeed the child for fear of overfeeding him is 
also wrong, but this is rare, the mothers having rather 
an opposite tendency. If a child changes the accepted 
order of the foods in a repast, do not interfere, no 
matter how odd or bizarre it seems to you. It is only 
a matter of taste. In the alimentary tract all the foods 
are soon mixed and separated according to other rules 
than those laid down by us. Overeating and constipa¬ 
tion are the direct causes of the majority of those 
diseases which are due to our own fault, and chronic 
constipation is often a consequence of chronic overeat¬ 
ing. It is sufficient to overeat once in about ten days 
to be always ill, as we become ill again before our 
former illness is healed. Overeating is one of the 
causes of obesity, and stoutness is always abnormal, 
as our natural condition is to be lean. Often it is also 
the cause of underweight and general weakness, as it 
results in intoxication. Do not always accuse the food 
as such when your child suffers from indigestion; see 
if he did not overeat; he can become ill from the best 
food, if he eats too much of it or if he eats when he has 
no business to eat, and his illness consists then of auto¬ 
intoxication. When a child is ill, he should fast com¬ 
pletely, except for water. And lastly, do not consider 
any rules, not even these, as eternal and unchangeable 
verities. Use your judgment. 

Defecation and Urination.—Instruct the children 
246 


never to postpone the satisfaction of these needs. Show 
them how inesthetic and immoral (from a health 
standpoint) it is to keep in one’s body longer than it 
is necessary that which is unclean, poisonous and 
destined to be eliminated. 

Enuresis Noctuma. —Bed wetting is rarely an effect 
of ill health; it is mostly a result of wrong up-bringing. 
Do not use the drugs commonly prescribed for this 
habit. They are unnecessary and harmful. Nor will 
punishments be of any help; if anything, they will make 
matters worse. If the child is old enough to understand 
you, talk to him and explain him his condition until you 
get his collaboration. During the day, that is, when he is 
conscious, let him train his sphincter by keeping his 
urine back for a few minutes when he feels like void¬ 
ing it, until his subconscious mind will be conquered. 
(If you are attentive, you will find that there is 
no real contradiction between this sentence and the 
above last paragraph!) Come to the child’s aid in the 
following manner: Regulate his meals so that the last 
one be about three or four hours before his going to 
bed and that it be composed of as little liquid or thirst 
producing aliments as possible. Let him have all the 
milk he wants at other meals, but not a drop of it at 
the evening meal. No sharp and spiced foods at any 
time. Not much playing in the evening; avoid water 
drinking before going to bed. Be sure to have the 
child urinate before he goes to bed. The air in the 
sleeping room should be fresh. Let the foot side of 
his bed be elevated about eight inches above its head; 


247 


some wooden blocks may be used. This will have the 
effect of partly unloading the lower portion of the 
bladder and reduce the pressure upon its orifice into 
the urethra. Daily general lukewarm baths with short 
cold sprays over the inferior abdominal wall, that is, 
the bladder region. For some time, waking up the 
child for urination once or twice during the night, 
will be necessary. Be sure that the bowel movements 
are correct. 

Health Habits.—Parents should see that they them¬ 
selves get as much health information as possible and 
then impart it to their child. Teach him correct and 
rational health habits and respect for his body, as well 
as a certain degree of trust and faith in its vital foices, 
especially when fighting disease. But do not fall into 
the extreme of over-emphasizing the importance of the 
body as such or of idolizing it. Never fail to impress 
the child with the value of the mind as guiding and 
strongly influencing the bodily organs in health and 
disease. And let him try to gain powerful muscles 
but not to worship the body so much as to use all 
his energy for the purpose of becoming an extra¬ 
ordinarily strong, sportive, athletic individual only, to 
the exclusion of all mental pleasures and artistic neces¬ 
sities. 

Let the child become imbued with the need of 
internal cleanliness, so that, while he will appreciate 
the necessity of external cleanliness, as of his room, 
his clothes, his skin, he will not be satisfied with this, 
but eat, breathe, live so, that his lungs, stomach and 

248 


blood be as clean as possible. Let us bring up a gen¬ 
eration with a desire for cleanliness of the deepest 
things and they will cleanse society of all its dirt! 

Avoid to let too much fear of disease and disease 
symptoms as well as of microbes, flies, etc., creep into 
the child’s mind. It may become an irrational fear 
that will be impossible to eradicate. And the results 
may be disastrous. 

When the child is ill, do not make more fuss over 
his sickness than it is necessary. Let him despise the 
present prevailing ethics of disease; let him be for the 
ethics of health,—a health enthusiast. Let him be 
ashamed to he ill . Let the next generations be ashamed 
of disease, individually and socially, and they will do 
all in their power to eliminate its individual and social 
causes. 


249 


The following preface has been received too late 
to be placed at the front of the book, where it belongs. 
Therefore it is printed here. Since many years its 
authors have been among the very few believers in 
libertarian and rational education and—what is very 
rare—have practiced what they have believed. 

December 24, 1921. 

Through our experiences we have commenced to 
doubt the value of books and lectures on education as 
means of enlightenment, because it seems almost as 
if only those understand who do not need the preach¬ 
ment. If this should be true, then this book will be 
one of the many contributions to education that will 
interest those who like to find corroboration for their 
own beliefs or knowledge, but will be a closed book 
to those whom we are most desirous of reaching. 

However, this is a debatable subject, and there are 
\still those earnest seekers who, agreeing with Dr. Liber 
in general, will want to know the best ways and 
means. 

It has been a disappointment to us to find thinking 
people, radicals and liberals, lacking in an under¬ 
standing of the growing needs of the child. When 
sensible people go into the chicken raising business, 
or stock raising or the breeding of puppies, they usual¬ 
ly try to acquire as much information on the subject 
as possible. But when the first child is born into the 
home he usually enters a world of ignorance as to his 
ireal needs, and probably he will have to pay the 

250 


penalty for the lack of knowledge on the part of his 
parents , though they may he over-zealous about his 
physical care. 

^.5 in Dickens’ novels we found the “story” more 
interesting as we read on , so we would advise inquirers 
not to stop at the first page or two for fear Dr, Liber 
has set down only a series of “don’ts”, 

One will have to go a long way to find another 
book expressive of such refined sentiments , recording 
such sympathetic observations and giving such intelli¬ 
gent advice as is found in these pages. It is quite 
evident that Dr, Liber is by temperament a child’s 
man as well as a true physician. To him , the child } 
the human being is something more than a mammal. 
There is in the child something worth striving for — 
something which spells hope for the future. To him , 
apparently , the child is not merely an embryonic suc¬ 
cessful business man , but one who may have something 
from within to express , something worth developing. 

Not until you get into the essays on sex education 
will you strike this sentence , which contains good 
advice in regard to any teaching: 

“Answer the child’s questions truthfully and simply , 
but never more than he desires to know.” And the 
last three paragraphs of the essays on “Religious 
Ideas” should be read by most radicals and liberals. 
In fact w.e would place them at the beginning of the 
essays. 

In the old-fashioned conservative home the child 
was kept in the back-ground , but in the modern liberal 
home it is likely that he is too much in the foreground. 
Instead of being given all the freedom that is con- 

251 


sistent with the fretdom of his 'parents , he is per- 
mitted to monopolize that precious article , resulting 
in his acquiring an inflated sense of his superiority 
or importance; to be followed by an unexpected jolt 
when he steps out into the world as one of many , 
and where he may have to prove himself in one way 
or another , before homage will he paid him . 

For those ivho are fearful of curtailing a child's 
freedom by any form of denial there is this paragraph: 
u Right from the beginning learn to cuccord the child 
cheerfully cdl that you could or should grant him 
and to refuse him sternly and energetically all his 
impossible and unreasonable requests 

Possibly we might use the word “ positively ” in 
place of the words “sternly and energetically ", but 
the main thing is that he shall know from experience 
and the positive tone of the voice that a refusal 
means a refusal. To be positive is not necessarily to 
be harsh. 

When Dr. Liber says that “sugar, candies , ice 
cream are good for children ” we wonder if he should 
not have explained the difference between sugar and 
sugar. Is not pure white sugar as much denatured 
as pure white flour? And most cheap candies and 
some that are not cheap are flavored and colored with 
coal-tar extracts and commercial ice creams contain 
glue besides starch and coal-tar colorings. Much more 
might be said on this subject and possibly Dr. Liber 
will take it up in some later edition.* 

Prefaces are not usually read; but in case someone 
should happen to be curious enough to read this pre¬ 
face let us call this sentence to his attention so that 

252 


he may "be impressed with it when he reads it again: 

“The more you help a child the more helpless he 
will be .” 

We may finish by saying that we have our doubts 
about the child owing the parents “friendship and 
affection”—but the rest of the paragraph so modifies 
the statement that Dr . Liber may be forgiven for 
making it . 

Elizabeth Byrne Ferm. 

Alexis C. Ferm. 

Principal Teachers, Ferrer Modem 
School, Stelton, N. J. 

*F'»om the author of “The Child and the Home”: 
We find adulteration in all foods, but this book is not 
the place where its details can be described. Parents 
who wish to learn the difference between good and 
bad sugar or candies, will get information from other 
sources. What I meant to emphasize was that sweets 
as such, if not eaten in too large quantities and if 
not eaten after one is satiated with other food, are 
not harmful to normal children and should not be 
forbidden. Sugar, candies, ice-cream as such, are good 
foods and may take the place of other food or form 
meals by themselves. The parents who do not allow 
their use (and so force the child to eat them in secret 
and illegitimately and to eat too much of them) would 
prohibit them even in the case of the purest sweets. 
By the way, while all adulterations are swindles and 
should not be tolerated, I do not believe that there is 
much harm in the above-mentioned extracts, glues or 
colorings. 


253 


Rational Living 

An Independent Magazine Devoted to the Teaching 
of Rational Methods of Living 

Health Conservation Freedom in the Brincinc-Up of Children 

Prevention of Disease Birth Control 

Vecktarianism Drucless Treatment of Disease 

Social Hyciens All Truths from All Healinc School t 

Industrial Hygiene Fichtinc Dishonesty in All Healing 

Personal Hygiene Profession* 


Sexual Hygiene Fichtinc Superstition 

Child Hyciene Art 

B2NZI0N LIBER, M. D., Dr. P. H., Editor 
Forty cents a copy. Four Dollars for 12 numbers . 
(When sending money from Canada or other 
foreign countries compute in United States value.) 

Address: RATIONAL LIVING, 

61 Hamilton Place, New York. 

Until the next edition of “The Child and the 
Home ” is published , all questions and objections 
regarding the ideas expressed in this book will 
be answered in Rational Living . 


WHAT READERS THINK OP RATIONAL LIVING 

(A few of many letters of praise) 

I am gratified as well as amazed to discover that there is a 
doctor in New York with courage to start such a magazine.—- 
Dr. J. P. Warbasse, Brooklyn, N. Y. (Noted Surgeon, Leader of the 
Cooperative Movement in America.) 

Highly interesting.—Editor One Big Union Monthly, Chicago. 

I like very much the spirit in which R. L. is edited. I feel 
throughout the magazine that it is directed with a sort of d>«\ne 
fury,—that you are raging, burning with fire and indignation and 
sarcasm.—P. S. Gibling, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wis. (Writer''. 

It is certainly unlike any other public medical magazine, that 
I know.— Dr. Ch. Bolduan (Chief, Section of Public Health 
Education, U. S. Public Health Service, Washington, D. C.; Lecturer 
on Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, College of Physicians and 
Surgeons, Columbia University.) 

The contents of R. L. are very good.— Dr. Wm. J. RobinsC.X 
New York. (Editor The Medical Critic and Guide.) 

254 


I read your magazine from cover to cover (incl.) and like it 
much.—Da. H. Lorber, New York (Noted Gynecologist.) 

Your magazine contains much interesting material and I con¬ 
gratulate the editor for his achievement.—S. D. Mott, New York 
(President, N. Y. Vegetarian Society.) 

It is a wonderful journal and deserves all the success in the 
world.—E. H. Julius, Girard, Kansas (Editor Appeal to Reason.) 

Here at last is a periodical devoted principally to health con¬ 
servation and disease prevention that is thoroughly sound economically 
and socially. The department on “Labor and Health” alone is worth 
the price of the magazine .—The World, Oakland, Cal. 

The spirit of R. L. is a spirit that transcends all prejudice, that 
is not sold to any party dogma, and which is in truth, as well as in 
name, “rational”.— S. Shapiro, Brooklyn, N. Y. (Teacher.) 

I am reading R. L. with real interest.—L. D. Abbott (Writer, 
Leader of Radical Thought.) 

I like your journal very much. The matter therein is strongly 
presented and I particularly like your clear short sentence style.— 
Ch. Owen, New York (Editor The Messenger, a Magazine for 
Colored People.) 

Your magazine is filling a much needed want. You combine 
in it knowledge, the truth and the courage which has been lacking 
in similar publications heretofore. At last we have a magazine 
which is calling “a spade a spade”, yet is constructive in its work. 
You are doing one of the greatest works that are done today in 
America; you are putting the tools of education where they should 
be. — Richard Mayer, Boston (Cotton Merchant.) 

R. L. fills a long-felt want in health literature.—J. Martin, 
Chicago (I. W. W. Leader.) 

R. L. is a valiant attempt to stimulate interest on many questions 
of primary importance—health, fitness, eugenics, procreation, and 
disease prevention .—The Worker’s Dreadnought , London, England 

A magazine in handy octavo, typographically excellent, full of 
good reading material. The editor, Dr. B. Liber, cannot be exactly 
labeled in his radicalism. He is essentially an eclectic, trying to 
absorb and popularize the most vital ideas in all systems of advanced 
thought. R. L. strives to cover the whole range of life. It deals ably 
and in lucid, popular style with the problems of health, particularly 
those affecting the life of workers. An implacable foe to the com¬ 
mercializing tendencies that are entering the service of health, it 
exposes and brands all kinds of quackery and humbug. It is down 
on patent medicines and widely advertised cm-o-alls. It recom¬ 
mends sanitation and prevention of disease as far more useful 
than drugs. At the same time it proposes a profound belief in 
vegetarianism, both from the medical and the humanitarian view¬ 
point. The range of Rational Living is not limited to health 
alone. It includes art, literature, economics, politics, morality. The 
reader may once in a while differ with the views presented, but 

255 


he will invariably feel that they express an honest opinion. The 
service derived from the perusal of that lively monthly messenger 
is worth many times the financial expense.— N. Y. Call Magazine. 

After having been a subscriber to almost every health magazine 
published in t^e U. S. for tne last 25 years yours appeals to me 
as the ablest of all.—M. Boas, Coreys, N. Y. 

We quote and translate very freely from R. L. Indeed we find 
most of your work so interesting that we cannot resist the pleasure 
of translating it for the benefit of our readers.—E. M. Osier, 
Valencia, Spain (One of the Editors of ‘’Helios”, a Spanish “Vege- 
tarian-Naturist” Magazine.) 

I want to write you a line of comradely greetings and tell you 
that we appreciate the work you are doing in your magazine and 
will be glad to boost it. R. L. is eminently worthy of survival 
and Mrs. Kate Richards O’Hare and I will do what we can to 
help it along.— F. P. O’Hare, Girard, Kansas (One of the Editors 
of “The National Rip-Saw”. 

The friends your magazine makes seem to be of the type that 
the Russian journalists used to call “reader-friends”. They come 
to enquire weeks ahead before the magazine comes in.— M. N. Maisel, 
New York (Book Dealer and Publisher.) 

R. L. is truly a great magazine, one of the very best..— 
W. Merchant, New York. 

I cannot express in words the great good R. L. has been and 
will be to the people, for it is the most honest health paper printed 
that teaches the right way of living; and it should be in every 
home.—B. C. Blake, Charlevoix, Mich. 

I wish to congratulate you upon your splendid achievement; 
your magazine is a revelation, and if “mens sana in corpore sano ” 
be a true saying, as I believe it is, R. L. is the most fundamental 
step in the right direction within this last decade. Radical organ* 
izations of all shades could do no more useful work than to boost 
the circulation of your magazine.—A. Marky, Suffern, N. Y. 

You make us realize that there is more in the question of 
health than we are apt to think.— F. Sper, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

R. L. is like a clear spring of clean truth in a desert of false¬ 
hood. It helps me to live right.—0. W. Evans, Tobar, Nev. 

Each issue that I have seen I recognize as of unusual value— 
and the very best of all the health publications.—A. Park, Palo 
Alto, Cal. 

I wish to compliment you for the rich contents of the last 
number, which is a real source of intelligent information upon the 
most vital and most neglected subject—health, physical as well 
as spiritual. I consider your achievements in this field of the 

E reatest importance for a saner and healthier society.—M. Bellitt, 
os Angeles, Cal. (Secretary, Los Angeles Vegetarian Society.) 
Articles from Rational Living have been reprinted by a number 
of publications in various countries. 












9 










































